


Drop a Heart and Break a Name

by MaCall (misterpointy)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Thawne Lives, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Friendship, Implied Sexual Content, Legacy Heroes, Marriage Proposal, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, OT3, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Omniscient, Parallel Universes, Polyamory Negotiations, Polyfidelity, Present Tense, Threesome - F/M/M, Time Skips, Time Travel Fix-It, Unplanned Pregnancy, Wordcount: Over 100.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 106,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misterpointy/pseuds/MaCall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s all a matter of perspective, and maybe we thought we were living one story, but if we look at it a little different, we can reframe everything—all our memories and attributes and experiences—and see that we’re actually living a different story.”<br/>—Kiersten White, <em>The Chaos of Stars</em></p><p>In which Ray Palmer buys S. T. A. R. Labs, Felicity Smoak relocates to Central City, Lilith Clay has a Cassandra complex, and Leonard Snart is terrible at feelings. Or, the Eddie Thawne Lives AU nobody asked for where Eddie isn’t the main character at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Movie of My Life Starring You Instead of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarsaparillia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/gifts).



> (1) This is non-compliant with _Arrow_ S4, _The Flash_ S2, and _Legends of Tomorrow_ because I wrote it the summer before those installments in the collective Arrowverse became a thing. I was going to wait until _Legends of Tomorrow_ aired to write this OT3 (y’know, because the canonical dudes involved hadn’t interacted yet beyond like three seconds of dialogue in the first look they released in May) but instead this happened. I regret nothing.
> 
> (2) It’s also a little bit nonlinear and very choppy because I was experimenting with freeform writing. Welp.
> 
> (3) Titles are from various Fall Out Boy songs, because I guess my emo phase never really ended.

**The trouble with wanting to do the right thing is that frequently the right thing today is the wrong thing for tomorrow, or the wrong thing for the people who are standing between you and your perfect, platonic future.**

Seanan McGuire, _Midway Relics and Dying Breeds_

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
**Prologue**  
In the Movie of My Life Starring You Instead of Me

* * *

**December 2013**

* * *

Lilith Clay starts living in multiple timelines after the particle accelerator explodes. It begins with reliving the same moment, running through _what if?_ scenarios, and progresses into visions of possible futures. At first they hit her like the Millennium Falcon in hyperdrive, bowling her over with a migraine so intense she sees stars and the contents of her stomach end up in the closest potted plant, but eventually she just gets vaguely nauseous and the ensuing headache is a dull roar.

Iris West is the first thing Lilith sees: a girl entering a lab to find a boy struck by lightning and a scream louder than the storm brewing outside.

When she goes to physical therapy a couple days later, the girl from her vision is at the hospital. It looks like she hasn’t slept or eaten in days. Lilith’s knuckles clench white around the handle of her cane as her gut twists like noodles spooling on the tines of a fork. Apparently the girl from her vision takes her coffee with almond milk and honey.

 _The hell_ , Lilith thinks as she hobbles to a nearby trashcan and tosses her cookies into it. Maybe the powers that be want her to ask this girl out. With a sigh, she extracts a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash from her purse, gargles, and spits. Then she throws the empty bottle in the recycling bin and shuffles away so she won’t be late for her standing appointment.

When she goes to physical therapy the following Friday, the girl from her vision is still there. She’s getting coffee from a machine in the hallway outside her friend’s room. Lilith sighs as another vision bombards her. She powers through the nausea without vomiting and deploys the to-go bag from Big Belly Burger with a cheeseburger and fries inside. After a week festooned with migraine-inducing visions of this girl in various stages of grief, this is the only thing she can think of that might make it stop.

“I know you’re scared,” Lilith says bluntly, “but putting yourself in the hospital with exhaustion won’t help your friend. Here.”

Iris blinks in sleep-deprived confusion, but she takes the paper bag Lilith shoves at her with the hand that isn’t holding a perilously full coffee cup. “Who are you?” she rasps, voice harsh with the dregs of worry.

“I’m your friendly neighborhood fast food fairy,” she deadpans. “I know you aren’t hungry, but you need to eat.” Lilith presses her lips together in an awkward smile and pockets the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. “I hope I don’t see you next week.”

Hours later, Iris realizes this means that she hopes Barry will wake up before her next appointment. No such luck, but his comatose body is relocated to S. T. A. R. Labs before Friday rolls around again. She’s done her research and she knows her friendly neighborhood fast food fairy is actually Lilith Clay, former prima ballerina and current notorious recluse. She decides to distract herself from the realization that she has no close friends who aren’t Barry Allen and she doesn’t know what to do without him. So she waits for the deadpan snarker with the cane at the hospital instead of visiting her comatose bestie at S. T. A. R. Labs.

Lilith is hungry and sore in the aftermath of her physical therapy, her left leg aching from knee to ankle as she hobbles away. Iris hops to her feet from one of the chairs in the waiting area and waves. It takes Lilith a few seconds to process that the girl from her vision is here to see her. Chronic pain is exhausting.

“Hi,” Iris says with a disarming smile.

“Hi.” Lilith retorts with a yawn she smothers in her cupped palm.

“It looks like you could use some coffee,” Iris says and tucks one hand in the pocket of her jeans and curls the fingers of her other hand around the strap of her purse. “Do you have time to stop at Jitters with me?”

“Do you have time for food?” Lilith doesn’t bother to explain that she doesn’t drink coffee because most people give her the stinkeye when she does that. “I’m starving.”

“I can do lunch.” Iris’s smile widens into something warm and genuine. Lilith isn’t normally a people person, but apparently the universe has given her a mission she has no choice but to accept.

* * *

**January 2014**

* * *

Eddie Thawne covers shifts for Iris’s father after Barry gets stuck by lightning. Iris buys him a cup of coffee to say thank you. Eddie gives her his number, but she doesn’t call—her father nicknamed him Detective Pretty Boy, which isn’t a ringing endorsement.

When they run into each other at Jitters a few weeks later he doesn’t even mention it. He just smiles, says hello before he orders his usual and then goodbye after he gets his coffee to go. When she calls him that very afternoon, it’s because he didn’t act like she owed him something. When he asks her out, she says yes because he didn’t pressure her into explaining why she didn’t call.

Lilith thinks the fact that Iris kept his number says a lot. People give Iris their contact information on a regular basis. It’s a hazard of being a conventionally attractive barista. When she has a vision of Eddie proposing to Iris with an antique diamond ring he probably got from his grandmother, she rolls her eyes. Iris is conveniently second-guessing her decision to start dating again at the time. “What?” she asks.

Lilith shrugs and tells herself that precognition doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. “Maybe this guy is your future husband,” she snorts, then gets serious. “Barry wouldn’t want you to stop living your life because of him,” she says it as kindly as she can. It still sounds like a sucker punch.

Iris exhales and her shoulders hunch with the weight of her guilt. “I know,” she says softly. “I just hate feeling like I’m moving forward while he’s stuck.”

“If you start dating again, it won’t mean you love Barry any less,” she retorts gently. Iris has a huge heart, which Lilith knows from personal experience. “I think you can date Detective Pretty Boy without abandoning your best friend.”

“I guess so,” Iris says.

Lilith nods as if to say _I know so_ and changes the subject. “What’s up with your dissertation?” she asks.

Iris groans and reintroduces her head to the tabletop.

* * *

**February 2014**

* * *

Sandra Hawke goes to Jitters after work sometimes to get a hot chocolate for her son Connor. Lilith sees her and her husband fighting—the visions blur together but it’s obvious they fight a ridiculous amount.

To her credit, she handles this vision a lot more delicately than she did when she met Iris at the hospital two months ago. Sandra is friends with Kathy Kane, whose sister Fiona Webb has been dating Lilith’s roommate Patty Spivot since their sophomore year at Hudson, and Connor goes to school with Iris’s niece and nephew. Lilith can work with those degrees of separation.

 **Iris** , she texts, **do either of your siblings need a babysitter?**

Then, to Patty: **do Kathy and her friend Sandra need a babysitter?**

Patty texts back: **you’re a millionaire, why do you want to hang out with second graders?**

Lilith shrugs, then remembers Patty can’t see her and retorts: **because reasons**.

Iris replies: **Lola makes her babysitters cry**.

Lilith snorts. **I can take whatever she dishes out** , she retorts.

Iris responds, **if you say so**.

By the end of the month Inez Rhodes and Felicia Kane start taking ballet lessons from Lilith’s mom, Wally West has weekly sleepovers with Connor Hawke, and Sandra ends up coming with Kathy and Fiona to movie night at Lilith and Patty’s apartment most Tuesdays.

 _Bitches get stuff done_ , Lilith thinks.

* * *

**June 2014**

* * *

Iris finishes her dissertation and graduates from Hudson University with a Doctorate of Philosophy in Communications. Neither of her siblings can make it to the ceremony, which isn’t a surprise because they’re both married with kids. Each graduate gets two tickets. Iris gives one to Lilith and feels guilty for wishing Barry was awake to use it instead.

“Congratulations, Dr. West!” Lilith grins and hooks her cane over the crook of her elbow so she can snap a picture of herself, Iris and Joe with her phone.

“I like the sound of that,” Iris smiles back and links arms with her, “and I want a copy of that photo.”

Lilith texts it to her without unlinking their arms as they hobble toward the parking lot with Joe behind them. Iris never really stops missing Barry, but now Lilith is irreplaceable too.

* * *

**September 2014**

* * *

_Charmed_ was right: the truth is out there, and it hurts.

There are hundreds of people with powers in Central City and a significant amount of them are doing harm. Lilith foresees every death, hears every scream, and hates everything as she offers up the contents of her stomach to the porcelain gods. She feels more powerless with every future she can’t change, every person she can’t save. She has no idea what’s real and what isn’t because everything feels real to her in loose time.

She’s not Phoebe Halliwell. She and Piper Halliwell have the same birthday, but that is neither here nor there; there’s no angel to guide her, no handbook in the attic, no greater good.

She doesn’t have the spoons for this.

* * *

**October 2014**

* * *

Cisco Ramon is Schrödinger’s mechanical engineer: sometimes he dies, sometimes he doesn’t. Lilith has no idea who he is, which is inconvenient because she’s watched him die over and over for weeks now. Lilith recognizes the murderer—everybody in Central City knows Harrison Wells—but another face lurks beneath his, flickering like an afterimage at the edge of her periphery.

Lilith doesn’t even know where they are. Or when they are. Or how to stop it. Approximately no one will believe her if she tries to explain that she’s seeing a murder before it happens on a morbid loop. Especially since the murderer is using a wheelchair in real life but capable of walking in her vision, which makes no sense.

 _Cassandra, eat your heart out_. Lilith sighs and dry swallows two Advil, more for the familiar pain in her leg than the ache toiling and troubling at the back of her skull. “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga is stuck in her head.

Elsewhere, the once and future Flash wakes up and a hero’s journey begins.

* * *

**November 2014**

* * *

Lilith meets Leonard Snart the summer before she starts college. After her fourth major surgery—the outpatient procedure to repair her re-ruptured Achilles tendon—he sedates her and wheels her out of the hospital in her chair with no one the wiser. At least he has the courtesy to wait until she finishes recovering from the arthroscopy they did on her torn ACL.

Kidnapping her for ransom is what makes him decide that robberies are much more efficient than holding people hostage. Instead of screaming, or crying, or demanding he let her go, she kicks him in the face with her uninjured leg and demands a cut of the ransom money in exchange for not pressing charges against him in the aftermath of his criminal malarkey. Then she forces him to help her with physical therapy exercises while he makes ransom demands and glowers at her, like villains do.

“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asks as he helps her bend and unbend her knee. Leonard applies more pressure than strictly necessary to jagged line of stitches on the back of her calf and grins to himself as she clenches her teeth in pain.

“I am,” Lilith huffs. “I think I’m worth more to you alive, but I might be wrong. I know you could hurt me, or kill me, or rape me, or do whatever it is bad guys do to girls who can’t run away, but my whole world ended a few weeks ago and I’m still here. I survived an apocalypse. I’ll survive this, too. Also my biological father only acknowledged me so he could use my injuries as a publicity stunt. Make him pay through the nose. Maybe deflate his head a little.”

Leonard doesn’t know whether to be disgusted by the cliché or impressed by her courage. When he kneels to undo the zip tie binding her wrists and say goodbye, she pats his face after he frees her hands.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Lilith can’t quite keep the bite out of her voice, “but I never want to see you again.”

Five years later, she walks into the _Motorcar_ and sees him sitting at the table by the window facing the precinct. He has headphones on, the clunky kind. He’s listening to police scanners and plotting to rob an armored car. Lilith sits in the chair across from him while Iris is at the counter ordering takeout for Joe and boops him on the nose.

Leonard makes a disgruntled noise and removes his headphones so they hang around his neck. He doesn’t like to lose his cool. If the look he gives her says anything, it’s that he regrets not killing her when he had the chance. “So you can walk now,” his voice is smoother than she remembers, but his eyes are the same harsh blue. “Congratulations.”

 _I can do so much more than that_ , she thinks. Aloud, she says: “Thanks.” She sees him wearing ridiculous goggles and a winter coat with a fur-trimmed hood in the middle of summer. _The hell_ , she thinks, _we live in Missouri. It’s hot as balls here_. “By the way, it’s really obvious you’re casing the joint. If you’re trying to be inconspicuous, it’s not working.” With that, she hobbles over to where Iris is waiting and orders some fries to go. Maybe she’s tickling the dragon by taunting him, but she’ll see it coming if he ever tries to hurt her again. For the first time her vision thing feels like a gift, not a curse.

“That guy you were talking to was cute,” Iris grins conspiratorially at her as they cross the street. “Maybe you can ask him to be your date for trivia night.”

Lilith chokes on thin air and sees a man frozen to death beneath the domed ceiling of a movie theatre. “How about no,” she says as nausea remixes her guts. “There is not enough no in the world.”

Felicity visits Starling City again to see Barry the next day. Iris texts Lilith, **don’t come to trivia night. I’m setting Felicity and Barry up**. Then, **he says they’re just friends, but I call shenanigans. I think they’re perfect for each other**.

Now that Barry is awake and running, Iris keeps trying to introduce her to him. She doesn’t want to meet the Flash. She knows his friends at S. T. A. R. Labs have been searching for people like her. Apparently they imprison the ones who pose a threat to the city.

She has a hunch they might see her foreknowledge as a threat.

* * *

She sees an exploding woman and a man in an army uniform with two black stars sewn on his jacket. Of course the government is looking for people like her. She isn’t surprised or even disappointed at this point. She just wants to sleep for days.

Iris calls and invites her to meet Barry and get drunk, but the dude who Harrison Wells is going to murder will be there. Lilith isn’t stealth enough to risk being in the same room with them. Iris has a close encounter with the Flash later that night. Lilith lies awake and spaces out in the general direction of her ceiling.

She sees Barry try to save the exploding woman. “She’s the first metahuman not hellbent on destroying this city,” he says. She wants so badly to tell him how wrong he is. She sees the exploding woman die in his arms. She sees the Flash punching a metallic dude who looks like he’s cosplaying Colossus in the face. She sees Barry reveal his secret identity to Eddie. She sees a shapeshifter turn into Eddie and shoot two cops. She sees the same shapeshifter turn into Barry and sexually assault a redhead. She sees Barry telling Iris they shouldn’t see each other for a while.

She sees Leonard call the Flash out on live television and a pyromaniac menacing the same redhead in what looks like a warehouse. She sees a nuclear man become an atomic bomb. She sees a man in a suit put himself between Felicity and a gun. She sees the same man in a metal exosuit remove his helmet and wave his gauntlet. “Hi,” he says to people who aren’t her, “I’m Ray.”

She sees Iris give the Flash his name. She sees Eddie on the floor of the precinct with a gunshot wound staining his shirt red and Iris kissing him, breathing desperation into his mouth. She sees Iris put her name on her latest blog post about the Flash and put herself in harm’s way.

She really doesn’t have the spoons for this.

* * *

Sandra calls Connor from Jitters to tell him she’ll be home soon. Lilith is sitting on the couch with him watching the episode of _Adventure Time_ in which Princess Bubblegum defeats Ricardio in hand-to-hand combat and tears him apart.

“Okay,” Lilith says after he hangs up the house phone, “the moral of that episode is: menacing ladies you’re romantically interested in is,” she imitates Lemongrab’s shriek, “unacceptable.”

“Lil,” Connor looks up at her as the credits roll, “are your mom’s dance classes just for girls?”

“No,” Lilith shakes her head slowly to avoid enticing a headache, “ballet is for everyone. Maybe you can ask your mom if she’ll let you carpool with Inez to class tomorrow after school,” she leans in and whispers conspiratorially, “tell her the first lesson is always free. I have a hunch she’ll say yes.”

Connor grins at her. Lilith smiles back and clicks through to the next episode, which has Lemongrab in it. She sees him as a grown man dressed to kill in what looks like green leather. She sees his half-brother in a red hood and his half-sister, a pyrokinetic metahuman.

Sandra calls Lilith after he goes to sleep that night. Milo is in Starling City on business, so she doesn’t have to worry about her husband overhearing. “I saw Connor’s father today,” she says, “he doesn’t know we have a son. I didn’t know what to do.”

Lilith sighs. “Why haven’t you told him?” she wants to know.

Sandra doesn’t respond for a long time. Lilith can hear her breath against the receiver, so she knows she’s still there. “I don’t know if I want him to be a part of Connor’s life,” Sandra admits, “he cheated on his girlfriend with me, which is how I got pregnant, and he bankrupted the multibillion dollar company his father founded. I also don’t want to explain that his mother gave me two million dollars to tell him I had an abortion and raise our son as a single mom,” she inhales a shaky breath, “his mother died earlier this year.” Then, she adds: “and Milo doesn’t know who Connor’s father is. I want to keep it that way.”

Lilith doesn’t have to be precognitive to know that Milo Armitage is a dangerous man and Oliver Queen is a human disaster. “I can’t tell you what to do,” she yawns through the word _what_ , “but I can tell you that Connor is going to ask you who his dad is someday, so you should probably figure out what you want to say when he does. I can also tell you that contributing genetic material doesn’t make somebody a parent,” she points the toes of her right foot more out of habit than conscious effort, “but my biological mother sent me a birthday card this year with a red wine stain on the envelope and _I wish you were never born, xoxo ‘Aunt’ Vicki_ written in it, so I’m biased.”

Sandra exhales a horrified laugh even though she doesn’t think it’s funny. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

Lilith shrugs, then remembers Sandra can’t see her. “Don’t be,” she says. “I’m not.”

* * *

**December 2014**

* * *

Iris is starting to think Lilith is keeping secrets like a dragon hoards gold: they’ve been friends for almost a year but all Iris knows about her personal life is that her biological father made her millionaire in a failed attempt to buy her love and her roommate is a lesbian who works as a forensic blood analyst for the C. C. P. D. Maybe she knows something about the Flash or the other people out there like him. It would explain why Lilith changes the subject whenever Iris starts talking about them.

“Why don’t you want to talk about this?” she asks. “I’ve seen the stuff you read. Literally every book you own is urban fantasy or science fiction. It seems like this should be right up your alley, but every time I bring it up you change the subject. Why?”

Lilith doesn’t know how to answer that. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. “What you’re doing is dangerous,” Lilith says. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I get that,” Iris says, “but this is important to me. And the city. And the world, probably.”

“I know,” Lilith says, “but I don’t think you understand the consequences of investigating people with powers when you don’t have any.”

“I got kidnapped by a guy whose skin could turn to metal,” Iris retorts, “and I was held hostage at gunpoint by a time-obsessed lunatic who shot my boyfriend. I understand the consequences pretty well, actually.” With that, she hangs up on her.

Iris stops her clandestine meetings with the Flash a few weeks later. “I’m sorry,” she gives Lilith a hot chocolate on the house. “I should’ve listened to you.”

Lilith eats a spoonful of whipped cream and grins as the chocolate sprinkles crunch between her teeth. “I didn’t say this wasn’t important,” she clarifies, “just that it isn’t worth risking your life or watching the people you love get hurt.”

“Isn’t that how you know something is important?” Iris wonders. “If it matters enough to take a risk?”

Lilith doesn’t know how to answer that. So she sips hot chocolate and listens to Iris laugh about how Eddie managed to tear the stitches in his head until her break ends.

It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen a future worth trading her present for.

* * *

**January 2015**

* * *

Lilith learns how to keep time from sticking to her a year after the particle accelerator explodes. It probably looks like teleportation to people who perceive the flow of time linearly, but what she actually does is hobble through loose time to get somewhere else in real time.

One minute she’s at Jitters talking to Iris when the cops order them to evacuate because the Flash is fighting Captain Cold and Heatwave in the street, and the next she’s a face in the crowd at the police station as the cops bring them in for their perp walk. Leonard acknowledges her with a nod as the cops haul him away. Lilith waves goodbye with the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. She sees a girl who actually can teleport break a prisoner out of Iron Heights. She sees another girl with harsh blue eyes helping Leonard and the pyromaniac escape police custody.

Iris gets a job at Central City Picture News a couple weeks later and texts Lilith, **never meet your heroes. Mason Bridge is a jerk!**

Lilith watches Wells give a press conference at the C. C. P. D. on her laptop the next day. Wells confesses that he knew turning on the particle accelerator might have catastrophic consequences. _I didn’t have to be precognitive to know that_ , she thinks.

Iris asks if he intends to rebuild the particle accelerator now or in the future. “Of course not,” he answers.

Lilith snorts at the screen. She sees the general who shot the exploding woman declare war on people like her. She sees Mason beaten to death after hours at C. C. P. N. She sees the particle accelerator recharging. She doesn’t have to be precognitive to know he’s lying through his teeth.

* * *

**February 2015**

* * *

Iris texts **Mason thinks Harrison Wells meant for the particle accelerator to explode**. Lilith flashes back to the night Eobard Thawne became Harrison Wells. She watches him stab missing reclusive billionaire Simon Stagg and her worst fears are confirmed by retroactive premonition.

Not all her visions have come true. Now that this one has, she assumes the recurring one in which Wells commits another murder is going to happen in real time. “I think you’re right about Wells,” she tells Joe after dinner while Iris and Eddie clear the table. “I think he’s a killer and he’s going to kill again.”

“How do you know about that?” he asks.

Lilith shakes her head slowly to avoid exacerbating her headache. “I can’t tell you,” she says, “but please trust me.”

“I do.” Joe says without hesitation. Then he asks, “Lil, does whatever you can’t tell me have anything to do with why you and Iris haven’t been hanging out much lately?”

Lilith bites her lower lip and nods. “I want to tell her so badly,” she says, “but it isn’t safe for her to know what I know.”

“Then it isn’t safe for you either,” Joe says.

“No,” Lilith sighs, “it’s really not.”

Elsewhere, Cisco starts to suspect that Wells is more than he seems.

* * *

**March 2015**

* * *

She watches Cisco die again. She still doesn’t know his name. “Joe was right,” he says shortly before Wells puts a hole in his heart. She sees venom stop his heart in another time and place. She watches the Flash shock him back to life.

She feels it when the space-time continuum ruptures and stitches itself back together. She blacks out from the migraine that ensues and wakes up when Patty flops onto the bed next to her.

Lilith and Patty have been roommates since their freshman year at Hudson. Patty spends most nights with her girlfriend Fiona. She lives with Lilith on paper because Loren Jupiter pays their rent. Lilith has always appreciated how Patty doesn’t treat her like a broken thing, never pushes her into doing stuff she doesn’t have the spoons for.

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” Patty squints at her in the dull green glow from the twinkle lights tacked to the windowsill through her blackout curtains, “but you look like shit. Have you been sleeping?”

“Not really,” Lilith says. She sees Leonard kneeling beside a pianist with frostbitten fingers and swallows the bile creeping up from her throat.

“Where are you on the pain scale today?” Patty gestures vaguely at the blanketed protrusion she assumes is Lilith’s bad leg.

“Three,” Lilith huffs noisily. She sees Barry tell Joe he was right about Wells. She hates not knowing when these things are actually happening. She can’t just wait at the precinct for the opportune moment to occur and assuming it already happened could have fatal consequences for her.

“So really five or six,” Patty pokes her shoulder with two fingers as a punishment. “Seriously, you’re the worst liar I know.”

Lilith makes a noise that sounds like the bastard offspring of a snort and a chortle when she chokes on her own laughter. If lying by omission was an Olympic sport, she would win the gold every time.

* * *

**April 2015**

* * *

Lilith is getting dressed when she hears her ringtone for Iris and lets it play through _I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity / who uses a machete to cut through red tape / with fingernails that shine like justice / and a voice that is dark like tinted glass_ before she takes the call.

“Please come to dinner with us,” Iris says. “I don’t want Barry to feel like a fifth wheel with me and Eddie and Felicity and her boyfriend.”

“I wish I could,” Lilith holds the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she attaches her garter belt to her thigh highs. When she was using a wheelchair, pedicures and wearing lingerie became the modern equivalent of putting on armor for her. Now those things help make up for her inability to wear high heels. “I’m having dinner with my parents. I’d rather be doing literally anything else,” she tugs her long skirt over her knees and slips her feet into a pair of black ballet flats, “including having dinner with you and Eddie even though I know you’re mad at him.”

“I’m not mad,” Iris protests weakly. “I just feel like I shouldn’t have to beg him to talk to me.”

“Iris,” Lilith sighs. “Your father is a cop. Your best friend works for the police department. You of all people should know that cops are legally obligated to keep work-related secrets from their significant others. You should also know that someone with more authority than a detective probably ordered him not to say anything about the police working with the Flash. Which makes me think this has less to do with Eddie and more to do with your potentially dangerous obsession with a certain masked vigilante.”

It also might have something to do with the fact that everybody in Iris’s life is lying to her. Iris scoffs even though she knows Lilith is right. She goes to dinner angry and picks a fight with Eddie that effectively ruins the evening for both of them.

Elsewhere, Ray and Cisco tinker with the exosuit as Felicity and Caitlin watch.

“It’s kind of like I’m dating Barry in Oliver’s body,” Felicity says and pales at the horrifying implications lurking behind that observation.

Lilith feels a disturbance in the force when Cisco remembers dying in the alternate timeline later that week. She sees everyone but Iris hop on the Wells Is Evil bandwagon. She debates telling Barry and the others everything right then and there but ultimately decides to wait until they eliminate Wellsobard—which is what she started calling him in her head after she realized he was Eobard Thawne before he was Harrison Wells.

Iris texts, **C. C. P. N. just got a tip that Eddie shot two cops**.

Lilith texts back, **he didn’t do it**.

Iris replies, **I never thought he did, but how do you know?**

Lilith responds, **just a hunch**.

* * *

**May 2015**

* * *

Iris texts her a vague rant about lies a week or so after she confronts Barry and helps him take down a psychic gorilla. Lilith bites the bullet and texts back, **so did he finally tell you he’s the Flash or did you figure it out yourself?**

 **You knew?** Iris responds. **How did you know? You’ve never even met him.** Then, **Oh my god, is that why you didn’t want to meet him? Did you know it all along?**

Lilith sighs and texts back, **I was at S. T. A. R. Labs when the particle accelerator exploded**.

Iris stops texting and calls her. “What the hell, Lil?” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Which thing?” Lilith stalls, “that Barry is the Flash? It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“No,” Iris says, “that you were there that night! Oh my god, are you like Barry?”

“I’m not a speedster,” Lilith says. “I can see the future. Also the past, sometimes. Or the present, elsewhere.”

“Wells took Eddie,” Iris lowers her voice, “can you find them?”

Lilith sighs, “I can try.”

“Do it.” Iris hangs up on her.

Lilith does something she’s never done before: she forces herself into loose time, hurls herself into the abyss. Suddenly her awareness of the space that her body occupies is gone and all that remains is possibility.

She sees a familiar redhead with frost creeping over her skin. She sees a man in a suit get shot through the heart for Felicity. She sees the general who murdered the exploding woman attempt to rob an armored car. She sees the Flash fighting what looks like his evil counterpart at warp speed and a female mannequin made of electricity. She sees a tsunami rising over Central City like the _Great Wave off Kanagawa_ and Felicity wearing a metal exosuit like cosplaying Rescue is her goddamn job. She sees a naked blonde girl emerge from a pit of black water. She sees liquid nitrogen and lead, among other things, turning to gold. She sees Barry cursing his sudden but inevitable betrayal as Leonard rides off into the night with his sister on the back of his motorcycle. She sees Eddie trapped in the labyrinthine bowels of S. T. A. R. Labs. She feels long fingers touch the scar tissue on the back of her calf and her vision blurs with tears.

Lilith calls Iris when she wakes up and lets her friend snap at her before she starts talking. “Eddie is at S. T. A. R. Labs,” she says. “I promise I’ll apologize as much as you want and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know after you rescue him.”

Iris hangs up on her once more, with feeling. Lilith swallows thickly. She curls into herself and lets the sobs shudder through her like thunder until sleep comes for her.

When she wakes up again, she feels the change in her power. It isn’t loose time at all. It’s a plethora of fixed points on a timeline, each with infinite possible outcomes that she perceives non-linearly. She moved through time after the Jitters evacuation by traveling to a fixed point where the outcome she wanted had already occurred. She hasn’t done it since then because it feels like losing time.

 _I’ve achieved time travel_ , Lilith thinks. _I need to sleep for a week_.

* * *

Eddie breaks up with Iris after she rescues him. Iris shoves the engagement ring she found on the floor in his face. She calls Lilith after he tells her about her hyphenated surname from the byline in Wellsobard’s futuristic newspaper.

“Do I marry Barry in the future?” Iris asks.

Lilith sighs, “Sometimes.”

“What does that mean?” Iris makes a frustrated noise she refuses to categorize as a whine.

“It means that every situation has many possible outcomes,” Lilith yawns through the word _possible_. “I’ve seen multiple futures where you marry Barry, but do you know what all those realities have in common?”

“What?” Iris asks.

“In those realities, for all intents and purposes,” Lilith yawns through the word _intents_ , “Eddie doesn’t exist. In some he dies as an infant. In others he was never born. Those realities aren’t this one. So you have to choose between Barry and Eddie and then you have to live with that choice for the rest of your life. I can’t tell you what to do. There are no guarantees. Not even with precognition.”

Iris huffs. “Can’t you tell me what happens if I choose wrong?”

“I don’t think there is a wrong choice here,” Lilith says. “I know you could be happy with either of them and I know you love them both. Barry is your best friend, but maybe you want more than that after all this time. Eddie is the guy you live with, the one who was going to propose to you. If he had asked you to marry him that night, what would your answer have been?”

“I would have said yes,” Iris says.

Lilith rolls over and lets her toes touch the floor. “If he asked you to marry him again, what would you say now?”

“I would still say yes,” Iris is smiling so brightly Lilith can actually hear it in her voice.

“So tell him that,” she retorts.

Iris hangs up on her again, but this time Lilith doesn’t mind. Eddie almost ruins everything again when Iris tells him that the future Wellsobard mentioned isn’t their future. Lilith finds him at the riverfront in the aftermath of that debacle.

“So,” Lilith says as she leans on the railing next to him, “did Iris tell you I can see the future or were you too busy breaking her heart to talk about that?”

“What?” Eddie asks. “Since when?”

“Since the particle accelerator exploded,” Lilith informs him. “I’m here to tell you that Wellsobard was wrong. In some realities you don’t get the girl. This doesn’t have to be one of them.”

“But she has feelings for Barry,” Eddie protests.

“So?” Lilith shrugs. “It’s possible to love more than one person, you know. What matters is how you choose to love someone. Iris chose you and you’re making her think she made the wrong choice.” With that, she smacks him upside the head with the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. “Cut it out.”

“It’s not that simple,” Eddie sighs dejectedly.

“I’m telling you that it is,” Lilith retorts. “I forced myself to really use my power for the first time to find you and I saw everything. I’ve seen you and Iris live happily ever after. I’ve seen who your kids are going to be.”

Eddie finally turns his head and looks at her with his arms still folded over the railing. “What if you’re wrong?” he asks.

“Bitch, I might be.” Lilith snorts, “but isn’t a future with Iris worth the risk?”

* * *

Martin Stein meets Eddie the next day. “You,” he says, “are the only person in this whole story who gets to choose his own future.”

“So long and thanks for all the fish,” Cisco quips. Lilith laughs so hard it makes her headache worse.

Iris smiles at Eddie and says, “Screw the future.” Lilith closes her eyes and uses her power instead of letting it use her. She sees the cryokinetic redhead marrying the nuclear man. She sees an unstable singularity churning over S. T. A. R. Labs. She sees Eddie die. She just hopes it’s one of the visions that doesn’t come true in this reality.

Barry still chooses what is over what might have been. When he returns to the present, Wellsobard has vanished in a puff of logic. They manage to contain the wormhole and shut it down. Iris squeezes Eddie’s hand and smiles at him as she links arms with Barry. “Let’s go,” she says. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Is it your imaginary friend?” Barry asks as he zooms away to change out of his supersuit and comes back in, well, a flash.

Iris rolls her eyes. Barry refuses to believe Lilith exists because she has spent a year and a half avoiding him and his ilk. Which is technically her ilk too. “Yes,” she says, “and Lil isn’t imaginary. She’s a metahuman. She can see the future.”

Barry chokes on his own air. “For real?”

Joe nods to himself because suddenly that conversation they had a few months ago makes sense.

Stein looks cautiously intrigued. “I would love to meet her,” he says.

Ronnie blinks and says, “Wow.”

Caitlin shivers a little, but the frost forming between her fingers melts before she notices it.

“That,” Cisco says in a tone that can only be described as reverent, “is awesome.”

Lilith is not prepared for company when they arrive: her apartment is a mess and she’s watching _Daredevil_ on Netflix in a tank top and no pants. Iris knocks. Lilith grabs a wrinkled skirt off the floor and yanks it on, keeping her weight off her bad leg as she zips it up. Then she hobbles to the door. Iris, Eddie, Barry, and Cisco are standing in the hallway. Joe is waiting in his car. Caitlin, Ronnie, and Stein are in another car on their way to Big Belly Burger.

“Iris,” she says. “Hi. Are you here to yell? If you’re going to yell, I think you should do it someplace with food. All I have in my fridge is a box of baking soda and a jar of pickles with one pickle in it. So a jar of pickle, really.”

“I thought you said she could see the future,” Barry says. “Why didn’t she see us coming?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Lilith huffs and hits his shin with her cane like the curmudgeon she wants to be when she grows up.

“Ow,” Barry says. His mouth pops open in shock even though it doesn’t actually hurt.

“In an alternate timeline, you broke the space-time continuum.” Lilith says. “I have the worst migraine known to humanity right now and it’s your fault.” Eddie holds up his hands in mock surrender when she turns to look at him. Lilith reaches into the purse hanging on a hook by the door and pulls a sheet of gold star stickers from the inside pocket. Then she peels one from the waxy paper and presses it to Eddie’s forehead. “Wellsobard no longer exists in our timeline because you chose each other,” she informs them. “So gold star for you.”

“That’s why he was gone when Barry came back through the speed force!” Cisco shouts triumphantly.

Lilith winces at the volume of his voice. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says, “but dial it back, Vibe.”

“Vibe,” he says, “because Wellsobard—I’m totally stealing that kickass amalgam from you, by the way—said I could see through the vibrations of the universe.”

“Yup,” Lilith deadpans. “You’re automatic, supersonic, hypnotic, funky fresh. Congratulations.”

“I like her.” Cisco informs Barry. “I’m keeping her.”

“How come I don’t get a gold star?” Iris wants to know.

Lilith peels another off the sheet and sticks it to the tip of her nose. Iris smiles at her and for the first time in a year and a half she feels like everything is going to be okay.


	2. Between an Aching Head and an Aching World

**As she stared at the ceiling that first night**  
**her body softly falling back into itself,**  
**she thought of how we dream of journeying**  
**on spaceships to other universes, other worlds,**  
**but really, for the forever,**  
**we’re stuck here on the dirt and**  
**the only time we will travel anywhere truly unknowable**  
**is when we slip into the skin of another,**  
**venturing into their mysteries,**  
**always hoping for**  
**a safe landing.**

Toby Barlow,  _Sharp Teeth_

* * *

 _Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 1**  
Between an Aching Head and an Aching World

* * *

**June 2015**

* * *

Wells is declared legally dead after his body is found. Ray leaves Starling City to acquire S. T. A. R. Labs so he can upgrade his exosuit with Cisco and fight crime with the Flash and his team. Starling City belongs to Red Arrow and Black Canary now and Ray assumes Oliver will bring back the original flavor Arrow eventually. Starling City was his home when Anna was alive, but she’s gone now and he’s finally ready to say goodbye.

After they avert the latest apocalypse and the top floor of Palmer Technologies explodes in a conflagration that shrinks him and his prototype exosuit, Ray informs Felicity that he bought S. T. A. R. Labs and moved Applied Sciences there before he signed his company over to her. He feels numb in the aftermath of their breakup and his subsequent heartbreak. He doesn’t delude himself into thinking he can win her back.

Ray isn’t used to being wrong. He was wrong about Felicity, but not about moving on. Maybe he’ll meet someone in Central City when he’s ready to fall in love again. He has other things to do in the meantime.

“I’m moving to Central City,” he says, “and I think you should too.”

It doesn’t get weird because she knows he isn’t asking her to go with him in a romantic context. All things considered, he took their breakup really well. Felicity scoffs because has no idea how to react, but then she can’t stop thinking about it.

Oliver says he wants to stop being the Arrow so he can be with her, which is all she wanted to hear from him since he kissed her last year, but she doesn’t think he can just stop believing that he doesn’t deserve to be happy. Once the city is safe and the adrenaline is out of her system, she signs the leftovers of Palmer Technologies over to him and tells him she needs time to figure things out for herself. “Maybe you should rename the company something else,” she smiles at him over her shoulder as she turns away, “like Queen Incorporated.” Walking away from him doesn’t get easier the second time around.

Then she realizes her lease is up. It occurs to her that she’s single and unemployed. So she packs her stuff, buys a ticket, and boards the next train to Central City. It won’t be a fresh start, but she’ll have a job and a purpose independent of Oliver and the ghost of his mission. She won’t cut all ties with her friends in Starling City. She isn’t ruling out the possibility of being with Oliver someday. She just isn’t naïve enough to think vanquishing Ra’s al Ghul fixed his emotional problems.

 _I still want more out of life_ , she thinks. _I just need to decide what that means without him_.

* * *

Lilith meets Ray Palmer on a Tuesday, the day upon which _Buffy_ says the world will probably end. It doesn’t, though. _I have always confused desire with apocalypse_ , she thinks.

“Hi,” he smiles at her and holds out his hand for the shaking. “I’m Ray.”

 _Back_ , she commands her hormones as she shakes his hand, which is awkward because she’s sitting down and he’s standing up. _Back to the pit from whence you came_. Aloud, she says: “Hi, I’m Lilith.”

“I know,” Ray says. Lilith narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. “Cisco told me about you over Skype,” he clarifies. “Also, I saw your first and last production of _Swan Lake_ six years ago. I don’t know much about ballet, but I thought you were amazing.”

Lilith makes an undignified noise that sounds like _hng_. Suddenly she’s more aware of the space she takes up than usual, and she’s disabled so she’s always uncomfortably aware of her own body.

When he laughs, she knows he’s laughing with her, not at her. “Cisco tells me you’re a precog,” he says. “I think we might be able to repurpose the neural uplink I invented for my exosuit to record your visions, which should make it easier for us to keep the bad ones from coming true.”

Lilith is having trouble processing what exactly is going on here. Apparently the supergenius who looks like a Disney prince knows her name and he started working on a way to make her life easier before they met. Ray is probably interested in her as a scientific phenomenon, not as a person; Stein treats her like a research subject, which is why she doesn’t like him. Unfortunately, logic doesn’t make Ray less attractive to her.

 _Why didn’t you warn me, universe?_ Lilith opens her hands palm up and looks up at the ceiling, praying to a higher power she doesn’t really believe in. _I am so unprepared_.

“Are you seeing the future right now?” Ray kneels so he’s looking up at her, not the other way around.

“No.” Lilith steadfastly ignores the possibilities of him on his knees in front of her and thinks, _so unprepared_.

“Oh,” he puts his hand on her knee for balance as he rises. When he realizes he’s touching her and not an inanimate object, Ray takes his hand away. “Sorry,” his smile turns sheepish. “I meant to put my hand on the arm of your chair, not on you.”

 _Jesus take the wheel_ , Lilith thinks. “It’s okay,” she says, “you can put your hands on me if you want.” Felicity, Cisco, and Caitlin peer at her simultaneously over the screens at their respective work stations. Lilith makes a noise that sounds like an unholy combination of choking and growling. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yup,” Cisco nods.

At the same time, Caitlin says: “Yes, you did.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ray says.

“Please don’t,” Lilith pleads with the floor because looking at him is no longer an option.

Felicity gives her a sympathetic smile as Ray goes questing for his office, which is basically an entire level of S. T. A. R. Labs. Cisco and Caitlin were the only employees who stuck it out after the particle accelerator exploded besides Wellsobard and the janitorial staff. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I happen to know that women who’ve mastered the art of open mouth, insert foot are Ray’s type.”

Lilith feels the telltale flush of mortification creeping over her entire torso. “I happen to know that fat crippled girls aren’t anyone’s type,” she retorts, “he was just being nice.”

“If you say so,” Felicity shrugs, “on a totally unrelated note: are you seeing anyone?”

Lilith rolls her eyes. She doesn’t have to be precognitive to see where Felicity is going. “I’ve been single for two years,” she says, “and I’m not looking to change that.”

* * *

**July 2015**

* * *

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every guy Felicity’s ever loved has left her. Cooper died—he wasn’t really dead, but she didn’t know that then. Barry ended up in a coma after their first date. Oliver left her over and over—for his mission to save the city, for Laurel, for Isabel, for Sara, for his mission to defeat Ra’s al Ghul. Ray is the only guy she’s ever left, because she wasn’t in love with him and he deserved better than that. Ironically, they’re still friends and she technically followed him to another city.

Ray is also the only deviation from a pretty clear pattern, one that makes her think she has more in common with her mother than she’s comfortable with. Maybe that’s why she left Oliver: because she didn’t believe he wouldn’t leave her again. Maybe that’s why she’s here with Barry: because he promised to be always be there for her even when they were hundreds of miles away from each other.

Felicity viscerally remembers the way he smiled at her after they kissed that night on the train, the butterflies fluttering fast enough to brew a storm in her stomach as she watched him run alongside her the whole way home. Despite how much things have changed since then, two things remain the same: they’re still perfectly perfect for each other. And they’re still pining for people they can’t have, only now he’s still pining for Iris and she’s pining for him.

 _So_ , she thinks. _Barry has become a thing. Again_.

Felicity groans and resists the urge to arrange a meet cute between her desk and her head.

* * *

Eddie and Iris start planning their wedding and they’re immediately overwhelmed by everything. Iris refuses to hire a wedding planner because she thinks it’s a waste of money. Lilith is the maid of honor. Caitlin, Felicity, and Lola—Iris’s older sister—are bridesmaids. Iris’s niece Inez is the flower girl; her nephew Wally is the ring bearer. Barry is the best man, because Eddie is an only child and he has no friends of his own who aren’t really coworkers. Joe would’ve probably been his best man if he weren’t the father of the bride-to-be, and if he hadn’t refused to give his blessing before Eddie proposed.

Which is how Iris, Eddie, Barry, Felicity, Cisco, Caitlin, Ronnie, Ray, Lilith and Joe end up sitting in close quarters around the kitchen table at Iris and Eddie’s apartment talking about their upcoming nuptials.

“So,” Ray says with the authority of someone who has actually planned a wedding before, “budget, venue, music, florist, caterer, photographer, officiant, wedding party, guest list, gift registry, dresses, tux rentals, engagement party, bachelor party, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner and wedding reception. Should we divide and conquer?”

“Are you sure getting married at the courthouse is off the menu?” Lilith yawns through the word  _married_. “All that jazz sounds stressful and expensive.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at her. “That’s what Iris thinks too,” he says, “but I want to get married at the church where my parents were married.”

“Aren’t you from Keystone City?” Barry says. “Not everyone invited to your wedding is a speedster. Are you going to make everybody else drive all the way to Keystone City for the ceremony?” Iris kicks him under the table. “Ow,” he says, even though it doesn’t hurt.

“Barry has a point,” Joe says.

At the same time, Felicity asks, “Have you set a date?”

“June third,” Iris says.

“Isn’t that the day Lorelai set for her wedding to Luke that never happened on  _Gilmore Girls_?” Lilith yawns through the word happened.

“Yup,” Cisco says.

At the same time, Ronnie says “Yeah,” and Caitlin and says “Yes.”

“I have no idea,” Eddie says. “I never watched  _Gilmore Girls_.”

“It’s on Netflix now,” Lilith points at him ominously, “resistance is futile.”

“ _Gilmore Girls_  rewatch!” Cisco whoops. “I’m so in.”

“Can we get back to our wedding?” Eddie asks.

“Is the church in Keystone City available on June third?” Joe wants to know.

“Yes,” Iris answers, “we put down a rental deposit yesterday.”

“Are you having the reception there,” Lilith asks, “or elsewhere?”

Iris sighs. “I don’t know if we can afford a reception hall,” she says.

“I can afford it,” Ray says.

“We know,” Lilith scoffs.

Ray tables the question of why it irks her when he throws money around. Iris and Eddie explain that taking his money doesn’t feel right.

“We also ordered our invitations,” Eddie changes the subject.

“At least we can use the surplus of address stickers when we send them.” Iris rolls her eyes, laughing.

Ray laughs in return, a smile unfurling one corner of his mouth. “I forgot about invitations.”

She sees him watch his fiancée die, his broken leg twisted at a wrong angle. She sees their wedding invitations arrive after the funeral he attends with a cast and crutches.  _Conceal, don’t feel_ , she thinks. Aloud, she says: “so your billionaire philanthropist thing is clearly an elaborate ruse designed to conceal a huge dork.”

“I wish people would stop comparing me to Iron Man,” Ray exhales what sounds like the bastard offspring of a laugh and sigh.

“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you built a metal exosuit and threw a little hotrod red in there,” Cisco says.

* * *

Barry spends an hour or so talking to Gideon in Wellsobard’s secret sanctum before he zooms through Ray’s lab and into Lilith’s office.

“So you can see the future,” Barry says.

“Yup,” Lilith says without looking away from the screen of her laptop.

“Then you know Iris doesn’t marry Eddie,” Barry grins triumphantly, “because Wellsobard coming here established a causality loop. Iris is married to me in the future, not him.”

“I’ve got a theory,” Lilith says.  _It could be bunnies_ , she thinks. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Sure,” Barry sighs.

“Did you know one in ten pregnancies starts out as twins?” Lilith asks.

Barry nods. “Yeah, but there’s this thing called Vanishing Twin Syndrome that happens to at least seventy percent of those pregnancies. It isn’t like genetic chimeras or conjoined twins because it happens on a cellular level: the other twin just vanishes. Poof.”

“Exactly,” Lilith says. “In an alternate universe you have a twin brother. In that universe Eddie dies as an infant, so the nurse who delivered him and you and your brother gives your brother to Eddie’s mother and tells your mother one of her sons was stillborn. I’m not going to get into how messed up that is right now, but regardless: your twin is raised as Malcolm Thawne and Eobard Thawne is his descendant. In that reality, the particle accelerator explodes in 2020 and gives Malcolm the power of the Reverse Flash. Eobard is born with that power centuries later. In that reality, you’re married to Iris and you have two speedster kids who call themselves the Tornado Twins. I think Wellsobard came from that alternate universe.”

Barry gapes at her. “Seriously? So you’ve seen all of that?”

“Yup,” Lilith says. “In that universe I’m not Vicki Vale’s daughter. My biological mother is Theia—a titan, like from Greek mythology. My powers manifested when I was thirteen instead of twenty-three. My ex-girlfriend Don is a boy named Donald who dies during an interdimensional crisis. Ray is married to Jean Loring, who is decades younger than her counterpart from this universe. Also, Iris is white. Actually she’s a redhead, like me.”

“For real?” Barry says incredulously.

Lilith snorts. “I know, right? Ours is the superior reality.”

“Definitely.” Barry gestures to indicate that his mind has been blown.

“Do you want Eddie to die so you can be with Iris?” Lilith asks.

Barry looks at her like he can’t believe she would even ask that. “No!” he shouts, then dials it back. “Of course not.”

“Then get over yourself,” Lilith says, “stop trying to make fetch happen and start living in the present.”

* * *

Leonard and Lisa return to S. T. A. R. Labs on a cold afternoon in July because Mick got careless on their last job and busted his heat ray beyond repair. Barry still owes him as far as Leonard’s concerned, so he doesn’t have to kidnap Cisco and hold his brother hostage to get what he wants this time.

Caitlin, Ronnie, and Stein are the only ones at S. T. A. R. Labs when the Snart siblings storm the place. Mick gets left behind because he’s too much of a wild card to be allowed in a Level 5 hazard zone with a time machine in the basement. Ronnie sends Barry a 911 text and the Flash zooms away from his day job to deal with them.

“Cisco isn’t here,” Barry informs him.

Leonard is so done. “Then where is he?”

“Ray finished a prototype of the high-tech brace he was working on for Lil’s knee,” Ronnie answers. “So she took him and Cisco to her mother’s ballet studio because she told Ray he couldn’t build a ballet studio in the empty office space on Level 300.”

“I think her exact words were ‘stop throwing money around like candy at a parade,’” Stein clarifies, “she has a particularly colorful vocabulary, doesn’t she?”

“Tell me where he is and I’ll go there myself,” Leonard says.

Barry nods in response to both the villain and the professor and texts the engineer. Cisco tells him to find _The Red Shoes_ on Google Maps, which explains why Lilith chose a Kate Bush song as her mother’s ringtone.

 _The Red Shoes_ is out in the suburbs, whose residents range from lower to upper middle class. Barry beats the Snart siblings there by several minutes, which is enough time for him to grab a snack and change back into street clothes so he can keep his secret identity a secret from Lisa. Then he waits for them outside on the sidewalk until Leonard’s motorcycle glides to a halt by the curb.

Lisa smiles poisonously and says, “Ladies first.” Barry gets out of their way as Leonard and his sister move past him on their way into the building. There is a little corner office where Lilith’s adoptive mother sits, looking over her schedule.

“Cisco is downstairs,” Barry says flatly.

Camille Saint-Saëns’ _Le Cygne_ floats through the air as they descend the staircase. Lilith is dancing _The Dying Swan_ , which is exactly what it says on the tin. Tension fills the room as she falters by design, condensing seven years of chronic pain and five years of using a wheelchair into the role of a swan who can’t fly. Ray is too transfixed by her to notice their entrance. Cisco does notice them, but turns away so Lisa and her brother won’t see that he’s openly weeping over a two minute performance. Lilith mimes the death of the eponymous swan, arms fluttering once before she stills with her torso bent over her knee. Ray applauds. Cisco claps through his tears.

“Wow,” says Barry.

Lilith snorts. “No,” she says. “I haven’t practiced in seven years and I weigh twice as much as I did the last time I danced,” she rises ungracefully to her feet and winces through the pain in her knee, “my technique is sloppy at best and my center of gravity is all wrong. I’m glad I don’t want to be a _prima ballerina assoluta_ anymore, because I couldn’t if I wanted to. Anna Pavlova would be so disappointed.”

“I disagree,” Ray interjects, “technique isn’t everything.”

Lilith side-eyes him. “I thought you didn’t know anything about ballet,” she says.

“I know you’re a prodigy,” Ray smiles as he kneels before her and gently removes the brace from her knee, “even severe injuries and chronic pain can’t take that away.”

 _I am the antithesis of prepared_ , Lilith thinks. Nobody can blame her if she loves him just for saying that out loud and meaning every word.

Leonard, meanwhile, is casing the joint and the people in it. Lisa sashays over to Cisco and says hello in a saccharine voice. Cisco is still infatuated with his sister, despite his resentment of her. Barry is keeping an eye on him, wondering why he chose to follow the scarlet speedster here instead of waiting for Cisco at S. T. A. R. Labs. Ray is tinkering with the brace on one end of a bench. Lilith sits on the other end of the bench looking at him like she sees right through him, like she knows he went out of his way because he wanted to see her again.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “Hi,” she waves to Leonard, her fingers curling into the hollow of her palm.

“Hi there.” Leonard folds his arms and tilts his head, his stare lingering over her until he meets her eyes and holds her gaze.

Barry looks from her to him and back again, aghast for two reasons. One, because his nemesis is eyefucking Iris’s other best friend. And two, Leonard gave him the exact same look when he sought him out at Saints and Sinners a couple months ago to ask for help in their failed attempt transporting the metahumans in the pipeline out of the city. “How do you know each other?” he wants to know.

“One time he kidnapped me and held me hostage on my birthday. I kicked him in the face. It was awesome.” Lilith absentmindedly strokes her thumb over the ragged scar tissue on the back of her calf and clarifies: “he was my rogue first.”

Leonard smirks at her. Lilith narrows her eyes at him. _The hell?_ she thinks, _he didn’t look at me like that before_.

“If you want him,” Barry folds his arms, “you can have him.”

Lilith can feel herself blushing at the implication of having Leonard, but she’s flushed from warming up and dancing so it goes unnoticed. “I’ll trade you my creepy half-brother who put an experimental hallucinogen in my champagne at a charity event one time,” she retorts.

Barry doesn’t know how to respond to that. “Never mind,” he says. “I think I’ll stick with Snart.”

“I’m touched,” Leonard says flatly.

“Let it go,” Lilith deadpans.

Cisco lights up. “The snow glows white on the mountain tonight,” he sings. “Not a footprint to be seen, a kingdom of isolation, and it looks like he’s the king.”

“The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside,” Lisa sings, her voice deep and lovely, “couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I tried.”

“Don’t let them in. Don’t let them see,” Cisco continues, “be the villain you always have to be.”

“Conceal, don’t feel,” Lilith sings softly, “don’t let them know.”

Barry sings out, “Well, now they know!”

Leonard draws his cold gun and aims it at Barry. Lilith hobbles through time and presses the business end of her cane into the side of his neck. “Cisco turned my cane into a taser when he got bored last week,” she says in her serious voice, “I wouldn’t antagonize him. Or me.”

“So you have powers, hmm?” Leonard looks down his nose at her and smiles like a shark smelling fresh blood. “I suppose it doesn’t matter whether or not you can walk when you can teleport.”

“Actually,” says Ray, “teleportation is essentially the ability to destroy yourself in one place and recreate yourself in another. Lil stops time on a small scale and then moves through it.”

“Also,” Lilith sighs and shifts her weight off her bad leg so it won’t hurt worse later, “I see the future.”

“I’ll make a new heat ray,” Cisco interjects, “if Heatwave promises not to kill anyone with it.”

“Done,” says Lisa. Leonard makes no such promises.

After they end up back at S. T. A. R. Labs so Cisco can make another the heat ray from scratch, the adrenaline wears off and the pain comes back with a vengeance. Clarke’s third law as it applies to Ray’s inventions notwithstanding, her chronically painful leg hurts worse than it has in a long time. So she hobbles away while Lisa comments on Caitlin’s wedding ring. Caitlin holds up two fingers, then gestures between herself and Lisa as if to say, _I’m watching you_.

Leonard follows Lilith into the elevator and stands next to her with his feet approximately a shoulder width apart, his hands folded in front of him.

“If you’re going to kidnap me again and attempt to use my precognitive abilities for nefarious ends,” she says, “you should know I won’t hesitate to stop time and electrocute you in the balls.”

“Really.” Leonard smirks at her like threats are the new flirting.

“Hell yeah.” Lilith meets his eyes with hers so he’ll know she’s totally serious.

“I have no plans to kidnap you again,” he informs her.

“Really,” she retorts.

“Not tonight,” he says. “All I want to do tonight is take you to dinner and then take you to bed.”

Lilith lets go of her cane in shock, but manages to catch it before it clatters to the elevator floor. Leonard chuckles, a low throaty sound that makes heat curl at the base of her spine. “Okay,” she says before she can overthink agreeing to sex with a supervillain.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he says as the elevator slows to a halt.

“On your motorcycle?” Lilith shifts her weight onto her uninjured leg and holds her cane out to keep the elevator doors open. Then she looks skeptically at him over her shoulder because motorcycles and canes don’t mix.

“In a car,” he clarifies.

“In a stolen car, you mean,” she retorts.

“Possibly,” he says smoothly. At least he isn’t lying to her.

“Make sure the restaurant is ADA compliant,” she orders. “I can’t do staircases today. I don’t care how fancy they make the place look.” When his expression goes blank with able-bodied privilege, she explains: “I need the restaurant to be accessible. If there are stairs, I’ll need an elevator. This is the kind of thing you should know when you’re dating a disabled person, even if your endgame is a one night stand.” With that, she leaves the elevator and doesn’t look back as the sliding doors close behind her.

Leonard picks her up at exactly seven o’clock in a sleek black vehicle that he definitely stole. Lilith is wearing her little black dress, or whatever the equivalent is when you’re a size eighteen. Its hem falls over her knees, but the neckline is low enough that she always wears a bustier underneath. Attached to the shoulder straps are little triangles of fabric held together with shiny black buttons masquerading as sleeves. It looks strange with her ballet flats, but wearing heels is not an option and floral print Doc Martens aren’t first date shoes.

 _Is this a first date?_ she thinks. _Or a one night stand? Probably the latter_. It’s a moot point. Doc Martens aren’t one night stand shoes, either.

Lilith quips “chivalry isn’t dead, it’s just criminal” when he opens the door for her. Keeping quiet in the car is a herculean effort, but she doesn’t crack a joke when he opens the door for her again at the restaurant. It’s a fancy place, without staircases but with copious amounts of mood lighting. Fortunately, the menu is in English. Lilith orders enough pasta to take leftovers home so she won’t have to cook for a few days.

Leonard is watching her with such intensity that she wants to look away. “Lilith,” he says, “is an interesting name.”

 _Most couples don’t name their children after mythological figures who have congress with the beast_ goes unspoken, but not unheard. Lilith has to swallow a mouthful of pasta and her standard issue rant on the mythological Lilith before she explains. “My parents met in an art history class at Hudson. They named me after two paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. _Lady Lilith_ , which represents the beauty of the body, and _Sibylla Palmifera_ , which represents the beauty of the soul.”

Leonard smirks at her, but it’s not cruel. Lilith doesn’t know how to handle that. “If you could,” he asks, “would you rather be a Jupiter? Or a Vale?”

“How about no,” Lilith says. It doesn’t surprise her that he knows who her biological mother is, even though that information was never publicized when her biological father acknowledged her. After all, her biological mother and her adoptive mother are sisters. “There is not enough no in the world. I wouldn’t trade who I am now for who I could’ve been.”

Leonard takes her back to a manor with mahogany paneling which she suspects once belonged to the mobsters he and the pyromaniac ran out of town. He locks the door behind her and undoes the long braid that falls to her waist, his hands meticulous and surprisingly gentle. She sees him braiding his sister’s hair in the morning before school. It’s odd to see him as a teenager with big ears he must’ve grown into at some point and a bruise shaped like fingers peeking out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt. It’s somehow more intimate than what they came here to do.

Lilith snaps back to reality when his hand twists into her hair, pulling hard enough to drag a soft moan from her throat. Leonard kisses her slowly at first, then escalates and bites her lower lip gently before he licks into her mouth. Her cane clatters to the floor with a hollow noise. She breaks the kiss to look over her shoulder. He takes advantage, scraping his teeth over the pulse in her neck and grinning against her clavicle when she shudders. Apparently he’s a tactile person, because his hands linger on her like he’s trying to learn something by touch. She curls the fingers of one hand into the collar of his shirt behind his head and pulls him back. Lilith pauses to catch her breath. Leonard notices how flushed she is and wonders if she blushes everywhere.

“I can’t stay standing for long without it,” Lilith informs him as she flails her other hand in the general direction of the floor.

Leonard lifts all two hundred pounds of her until she ends up looking down at him. Lilith puts her arms around his neck and wraps her legs around his waist automatically. She squashes the urge to boop him on the nose again as warmth settles below her belly. He holds her steady with his hands on her thighs and carries her upstairs. She isn’t thin by any stretch of the imagination and being lifted as if she weighs nothing at all is apparently the hottest thing. Who knew? Not her.

Leonard puts her down at the foot of the bed and pulls her dress over her head in one motion. Lilith sits on the edge of the mattress and looks up at him as he unbuttons his shirt and shrugs it off. He kneels to unlace his boots and stays on his knees before her after he takes his socks off. She undoes the front busk of her bustier and drops it on the floor, then moves to unhook her garters. He stops her by smoothing his palm over her heel and up the back of her calf to her thigh.

“Leave those on,” Leonard says in a hoarse voice as he curls his fingers under the waistband of her panties and tugs them off.

“Okay.” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ as he spreads her legs.

Leonard makes an appreciative noise because he can smell her arousal before he poses a question to her that, in hindsight, he probably should’ve asked at dinner. “Have you ever been with a man before?” he asks.

Lilith can practically hear the nonexistent record scratching in the distance. “What,” she deadpans.

“Well,” Leonard shrugs, “as far as I know the only person you’ve had sex with was the girl you dated in college—”

Lilith props herself up on her elbows and silences him with a look. “Okay,” she rolls her eyes when his gaze flicks to her bare breasts and lingers, “I’ve only had sex with three other people total until tonight and this is my first one night stand ever, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing—”

“Lilith,” Leonard smirks up at her, “you’re babbling.” With that, he gently bites the inside of her left thigh.

“Okay,” she puts one hand on his head and curls her fingers against the nape of his neck to lightly scrape her nails through the short hair there, “shut me up.”

Leonard blows a puff of cool air over her slit. Lilith blushes all over again when her hips lurch forward because he hasn’t even touched her, the lingering kisses he gives the striae on her inner thighs enough to make her toes curl. Leonard spreads her open with his fingers and puts his mouth on her, licking and sucking at the folds of her cunt before he flicks and swirls his tongue over her hole. Lilith clings to the curve of his head with one hand and fists the other in the covers. Leonard makes her come three times with his mouth on her clit and his fingers crooked inside her before he fucks her slowly, drawing it out until she comes again on his cock and he finally loses control. Lilith is surprised when Leonard falls asleep in the aftermath with his arm around her waist and his other hand splayed over her flabby stomach. Spooning isn’t what she expected. None of this is what she expected. Supervillains are supposed to be all _wham, bam_ and no _thank you, ma’am_.

Eventually she leaves the bed and puts her dress back on so she can find her purse and take her meds. Apparently the endorphins are gone and the soreness has arrived. Lilith is making her way slowly but surely down the staircase when she hears footsteps in the upstairs hallway.

“Where are you going?” Leonard wants to know.

Lilith can hear the smirk in his voice even though she can’t see him. It probably has something to do with how much cleavage she’s showing right now because she didn’t bother to put the bustier on again. “I left my purse on the coat rack,” she informs him through clenched teeth. “I need to take my meds.”

“Stay there,” Leonard orders when he walks past her on his way downstairs. Lilith sits on the stairs and breathes through an anxiety attack. She hates being incapable of doing things other people take for granted. Like taking the stairs. Or having a one night stand without making it awkward in the wee hours of the morning after.

Leonard sits next to her on the stairs and brushes her hair away from her face with the hand that isn’t holding her purse. She rests her head against his bare shoulder hesitantly. She has a hunch he might push her away. He puts his arm around her shoulders instead and gently sets her purse in her lap.

“Your injuries should have taken months to heal,” Leonard says as she swallows three pills and extracts a water bottle from her purse. “Not years.”

“Yup,” Lilith sighs and caps the half-empty water bottle, “but my mother kept pushing me to dance again. I ruptured my Achilles tendon three more times and permanently destabilized my knee before I stopped trying to please her.”

Leonard feels his heart clench in his chest and wonders what the hell is happening to him. “I ran away from home to live in my grandfather’s ice cream truck once,” he says.

Lilith buries her face in his shoulder in a futile attempt to smother her laughter. Somehow he knows she’s not laughing at him. “That,” she says shakily, “is awesome.”

Leonard strokes his thumb over the freckled skin of her shoulder and decides he wants this to be more than a one night stand. When he kisses her again, the high noise she makes in her throat goes straight through him and Leonard gets overwhelmed by the realization that he wants as much of her as she’ll let him have.

* * *

Mick shows up with Leonard and Lisa the next day to pick up the heat ray. Apparently they couldn’t persuade him to stay away this time. Lilith is asleep in a swivel chair next to Cisco with her head on his desk and her face buried in the crook of her left elbow, but she jolts awake when the pyromaniac shoves her chair across the floor to get at his new _baby_.

“Mick,” Leonard snarls his name in warning as he stops her skid so abruptly she almost falls out of her chair.

 _Too awks_ , Lilith thinks. _Hot damn_. Aloud, she says: “Okay, I don’t have the spoons for this malarkey. Omen out.”

Leonard folds his arms over the back of her chair and leans in to ask, “Cisco gave you a codename too, hmm?”

Lilith swallows a strangled noise at the sensation of his breath on her neck. “No,” she curses inwardly as her face heats up, “Ray did. I guess he thinks I’m a good omen. I don’t know why.”

Ray is watching them with his mouth pressed into a thin worried line. Leonard smirks because he can guess why. “Just so you know,” he says loudly enough for the entire cortex to hear, “she does blush everywhere.”

“Oh my god,” Lilith groans and buries her face in her hands.

Caitlin breaks the awkward silence and blurts, “You slept with him?”

“Yup,” Lilith stretches out the vowel sound awkwardly.

Cisco looks at her with such a comically shocked expression that it can only be described as _gobsmacked_. “How the hell did that happen?” he wants to know.

“Well,” Leonard says in a low voice that’s all innuendo.

Lilith turns and yanks his hood over his face, grateful that he’s committed enough to his Captain Cold aesthetic to wear a winter coat in the middle of summer. With that, she hobbles to the elevator and steadfastly refuses to look back. Leonard follows her inside and waves to Ray before the sliding doors close.

“The hell,” Lilith squashes the urge to hit him with her cane. “I thought last night was a onetime thing.”

“No,” Leonard turns to face her, “once wasn’t enough. I want more,” he takes a step toward her. “I want you.” Lilith steps back on instinct and forces herself to look at him. Leonard doesn’t push his advantage, not yet. “Tell me you don’t feel the same way and I’ll go,” he says.

Lilith swallows thickly. “I don’t know what I want,” she says.

Leonard shrugs. “Let me know when you figure it out.” At that, he hands her a blue post-it note with a phone number written on it in black ink and she takes it, careful not to let their fingers touch.

Lilith texts him a few days later: **I’ll feed you if you help me carry groceries**.

Leonard responds: **I’ll help you carry groceries if you let me eat you out**.

Lilith texts back: **I’ll let you do anything you want if you help me in the kitchen beforehand**.

“Whatever I want, hmm?” Leonard grins as he says it aloud even though he knows she can’t see or hear him before he replies: **I promise** , then adds, **and I always keep my promises**.

* * *

**August 2015**

* * *

Lilith manages to avoid talking about the whole not-dating a criminal thing until Iris takes her to lunch at Big Belly Burger and uses her investigative reporter skills. It’s super effective. 

“What do you see in Snart?” Iris asks with a fry halfway to her lips. “I’m not judging. I’m genuinely curious.”

Lilith doesn’t know where to start. “I had a serious girlfriend in college,” she begins, “Don, short for Donna. In retrospect she was exhaustingly angry all the time, but I loved her so much I had no idea what to do with myself.” Which is how it feels to fall in love for the first time. “Rae—her mom—died a couple weeks before graduation. Don asked me to marry her after we walked. Well, she walked. I wheeled myself onstage and off, but I digress. I knew she was hurting and she hadn’t really thought it through, so I said no and she broke up with me. I don’t regret it,” she shrugs the residual bad feelings off, “but my heart was broken for a long time and now it’s not. I know Len’s not a good guy.” Which means a relationship with him isn’t sustainable, so it won’t hurt as much when it’s over.

“Is your thing for him, like, belated Stockholm syndrome or something?” Iris is only half-joking. “Or the bad boy phase you never had in high school because you were homeschooled until college?”

Lilith snorts. “No,” she exhales the word in a huff of laughter. “I actually like him.”

“What do you like about him?” Iris swirls a fry in salt and pepper dip with one hand and rests her chin in the other.

 _Everything_ , she thinks. Lilith feels herself blushing from her face to her navel and exhales a soft _woo_. “I like how he looks by touching, as if he can learn whatever he wants to know with his eyes and his hands. I like that he’s a melodramatic asshole who tells mobsters they should retire to warmer climates even though we live in Missouri and it’s hot as balls here. I like how when I said that to him, Len told me totally deadpan that balls are generally colder than the rest of the male body.”

“Oh my god,” Iris presses her palm over her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle her giggles, “he did not.”

“Yup,” Lilith laughs against her knuckles, “he totally did. Len can be funny, in his own way. I like that about him too.”

“I’m not saying I approve,” Iris’s tone makes it clear that she doesn’t, “but I like that he makes you happy.”

Lilith grins around her straw and thinks, _me too_.

* * *

Barry has always noticed Felicity, but one day it just clicks. _Oh_ , he thinks. _Oh_.

He never stops loving Iris. She’s part of him, as essential as breathing. She’s his best friend, the person who knows him better than anyone. Always has been. Always will be. She fell in love with someone else, but they still love each other.

All that stopped him from dating Felicity before the particle accelerator exploded were unrequited feelings for someone else, bad timing, and hundreds of miles between them and their respective lives. None of those things are a problem anymore.

Cisco actually whoops when Barry speeds into S. T. A. R. Labs and kisses her in the middle of the cortex. Lilith starts a slow clap after the cheering shocks her awake. Felicity gasps “Oh,” into his mouth before she kisses him back. It’s the most beautiful sound in the world.

When they come up for air, Barry grins and says: “Hi, Felicity.”

* * *

**September 2015**

* * *

Leonard somehow ends up helping the Flash bring career criminals to justice. Barry ends up owing him enough favors for the information he provides that he could rob every bank in Central City and get away with it.

Now that his existence has been expunged from every database and every piece of physical evidence on him has been destroyed, he can do whatever he wants. After he loosed those rogues, he made plans to form a crew of metahumans with himself as their leader so he could use their powers to his advantage.

But he doesn’t want to play that game anymore. What he wants is the redhead with the Cassandra complex.

At this point everyone at S. T. A. R. Labs knows how he feels about Lilith except her. Lisa takes one look at him and starts laughing so hard she almost chokes. “Lenny’s in love,” she says, elongating the _oh_ sound for maximum annoyance. Lilith doesn’t hear his baby sister teasing him about his feelings for her in front of all her friends because she’s fallen asleep in her chair. Which is a thing that happens too often because she’s incapable of sleeping at night.

If she didn’t spend most of her time taking naps, she could probably take over the world. Except she doesn’t want to do villainous things like ruling the world or helping him make contingency plans for hypothetical-but-not-really heists. What she wants is to be happy. Which is terrifying because he has no idea how to make her happy.

Leonard decides he needs to get back in the game, so he starts planning his next job. He spends the night before he leaves with Lilith, helping her cook dinner in his kitchen at the apartment he leases under a clean alias in Keystone City and being so domestic it hurts. Their whole thing has been so shockingly, disgustingly normal it’s almost surreal. They went from candlelit dinner to grocery shopping and watching Netflix in the first week of their non-relationship. He ends up looking forward to watching _Gilmore Girls_ with his nemesis and the sidekicks on her giant couch every week. He’s Team Jess, of course. She’s Team Paris, because none of Rory’s male love interests are good enough for her.

“If you’re going to sleep here tonight,” he says, “you should know I won’t be here tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” Lilith is too busy looking for her underwear to bother looking at him, “where are you going to be?”

“Delaware.” Leonard can’t stop looking at her—the impractical length of her soft red hair, the constellations of freckles on her shoulders and back, the bruise he sucked into her neck. “I won’t be back for at least six months.”

“Wait,” Lilith says as she turns to look at him. “What?”

Leonard says what he knows will hurt her the most, and part of him is pleased with himself for being capable of that. “You should’ve seen this coming,” he smirks at her. “You should’ve known this wasn’t serious.”

Lilith swallows thickly. “Okay,” she says. Instead of yelling, or crying, or telling him not to go, she gets dressed and unhooks her purse from the doorknob. “Have fun storming the castle,” she says before she closes the door behind her and hobbles away without looking back.

* * *

**October 2015**

* * *

Lilith starts spending more time at S. T. A. R. Labs after Ray, Cisco, and Ronnie get the neural uplink working. She learns how separate the visions so the future starts looking like the root system of a giant metaphysical tree. Yggdrasil, maybe.

She doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t because it’s all real somewhere. Or it’s real here, but elsewhere. Or it’s real anywhere, but elsewhen. She knows everything, and nothing. It’s paradoxical like that.

She misses Leonard. She has an embarrassingly persistent crush on Ray. She hates herself for loving two people who don’t love her back.

She cuts her hair short and gets bangs just because she can. She avoids looking into her own future.

She doesn’t have the spoons for this.

* * *

Leonard somehow ends up with a plethora of pop music in his iTunes library. Lisa starts it. Lilith finishes it. In the end he has no one to blame but himself. Which is how he ends up listening to Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift when he isn’t casing the museum. Even listening to pop music is preferable to making small talk with the crew he assembled for this job.

Delaware is a thousand miles away from Central City and it still isn’t far enough. He misses Lilith. He makes a list of her flaws in his head. She has abysmal taste in music. He doesn’t get half the pop culture references she makes. She’s younger than his baby sister. Her personalized ringtone for him is “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. She has no brain-to-mouth filter and approximately zero chill. She kicked him in the face the day they met and took a quarter of his payout.

She snores. Loudly.

He’s so gone on her it makes him sick.

* * *

Barry busts a guy with a hypnotic violin a few days before Halloween. Cisco has been organizing a movie marathon all month. Lilith has been rewatching _American Horror Story: Coven_ and organizing girls’ night screenings of every movie Cisco vetoes for the marathon. Like _The Company of Wolves_ , which is based on short stories by Angela Carter. Or the remake of _Fright Night_ , which has David Tennant in leather pants.

“Those are not valid reasons for watching a movie,” Cisco says.

“Excuse you,” Lilith says in mock outrage. “Angela Carter is a goddess. Dishonor on you. Dishonor on your cow. Dishonor on your whole family.”

At the same time, Lisa says: “Colin Farrell as a sexy vampire and the Tenth Doctor in leather pants were the only valid reasons to watch that movie.”

Cisco and Lisa are not-dating. Apparently not-dating the Snart siblings is a thing. Lilith sighs and goes to curl up in her papasan chair for a nap. Lisa follows her instead of arguing with her not-boyfriend.

“So,” Lisa says, “do Cisco and I have a future or what? Not that I care.”

“Okay,” Lilith yawns, “do you want to know what I think?”

“Not really,” Lisa examines her nails and picks at her cuticles.

“Too bad,” Lilith retorts. “I think you actually care a lot,” Lisa shoots her a look that says _bitch, I will cut you_. Lilith rolls her eyes as if to say _bitch, please_. “Which makes you uncomfortable because you and your brother are both terrible at feelings.”

“Look,” Lisa says. “Lenny left me with our grandfather after our dad went to jail. When he found out I followed in his footsteps and became a criminal, he was pissed. I guess he thought I deserved better than a life of crime or whatever, but all I wanted was to go with him.”

Lilith recognizes how huge it is for Lisa to say any of this out loud. “Okay,” she says in her most careful tone, “but he didn’t leave me because he thinks I deserve better or some Heathcliff shit. Either he left because he doesn’t love me back or he does and he can’t handle it. There are not enough spoons in the world for that ignoble malarkey.”

Lisa shakes her head and her curls bounce over her shoulders. Lilith is freakishly perceptive with or without precognition. It looks like her brother thinks smart is sexy too. “I think I get it now,” she says.

“What?” Lilith yawns.

“What my brother sees in you.” Lisa smiles, awkward but genuine. Maybe she isn’t so terrible at feelings. “I do want a future with Cisco,” she says.

“Okay.” Lilith offers Lisa a gold star.

“Seriously?” Lisa raises one eyebrow, “grown-ups don’t get gold stars.”

“Maybe they should,” Lilith retorts.

Lisa scoffs, but she takes the sticker. After all, gold is totally her color.

* * *

**November 2015**

* * *

Leonard leaves a power vacuum when he runs the Santini family out of Central City. It gets briefly filled by a former capo from a lesser family who tries to make his mark on the city by putting a hit out on a judge. Unfortunately for him, the judge he wants to kill is the father of two metahumans with avian superpowers. Unfortunately for Lilith, her ex-girlfriend is the daughter of the honorable George Hall.

She sees Don flying without wings. She sees Hank slash an exposed throat open with his talons. She sees her own death at the hands of her ex-girlfriend’s brother and screams. Barry is there in seconds, debating whether or not to remove the neural uplink apparatus from her head.

“I’m okay,” Lilith says. “I just haven’t lived through my own death in a while. Not since Wellsobard was here.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell us what you knew sooner?” Barry says. “Because you foresaw your own death?”

Lilith nods. “I know you think I made the wrong call,” she says, “saving myself when I might’ve been able to save other people.”

Barry doesn’t know how to respond to that. Of course he’s held her withholding against her. Just like he blames himself for not being able to save everyone.

“I don’t regret choosing myself over them.” Lilith looks at him and sets her jaw. “I still haven’t seen a future worth trading my present for.”

Barry doesn’t want to live in a world where collateral damage is a thing he struggles to accept. Maybe if he hadn’t chosen the present over a better future for his mother, he wouldn’t understand Lilith now. “I get that,” he says.

“You do?” Lilith yawns through the words.

“Yeah,” Barry gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “You have no idea how much.”

When the moment she foresaw happens, Don almost dies instead of her. Barry puts Hank in the pipeline for killing the former capo who put a hit out on his father. Lilith ends up riding in the ambulance with her ex-girlfriend and waiting at the hospital until the judge makes an appearance. Unfortunately for his daughter, George is still a homophobic douchecanoe. Fortunately for Don, her girlfriend Kendra shows up after Lilith leaves the hospital. When she returns to S. T. A. R. Labs, Ray is sitting in her papasan chair watching the recording of her possible death.

Ray stands so she can sit down, but he doesn’t leave the room. “So what’s the story with you and Don?” he asks.

Lilith sighs. “She was my first love,” she says. 

“Why did you break up?” Ray asks. What he really wants to know is, _Are you getting back together with her?_

“Don proposed to me,” Lilith answers, “and I said no.”

Ray leans against the wall opposite her. She can feel his eyes on her face and curses inwardly when her cheeks flush. “Why?” he asks.

“Her family was a hot mess. My family is a hot mess.” Lilith shrugs, her shoulders rising and falling with awkward slowness. “I wasn’t ready to get married and now I’m probably going to die alone.”

“Wait, what?” Ray laughs at the absurdity of the idea.

“I’m not a hero,” Lilith says. Ray disagrees, but doesn’t say so. “I don’t have the spoons for masked vigilantism, but I know who the Flash is and I can see the future. I won’t compromise Barry’s secret identity or lie about who I am to my significant other. So my only option is to date someone who already knows that stuff,” she snorts, “but you’re the only person who qualifies and it’s not like we can date each other.”

“Why not?” Ray says.

Lilith yawns. “What?”

“Why can’t we date each other?” he wants to know.

“Because reasons.” Lilith retorts, insecure in the knowledge that her face is the approximate shade of a ripe cherry tomato.

Ray takes a step towards her. “What reasons?”

“Because you’re not attracted to me,” Lilith insists.

“Wrong.” Ray smiles and takes another step closer. “Your argument is invalid.”

“Because...” Lilith flusters. Unprepared doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Ray kneels so he can look her in the eyes. “Remember when you said I could put my hands on you if I wanted?”

“Oh my god.” Lilith hides her face in her hands.

“Is that offer still good?” he wants to know.

“You’re such a dork,” she says, peering at him through the gaps between her fingers.

“But I’m your dork,” Ray says seriously. “If you want me to be.”

Lilith stops hiding. “Okay,” she raises her eyebrows like a challenge.

Ray is laughing when he puts his hand on her uninjured knee and kisses her. When his other hand touches her face and Ray kisses her harder, she’s thunderstruck by the possibility that he might’ve wanted her this whole time while she thought her feelings weren’t mutual.

“You actually like me,” Lilith whispers against his mouth.

“Of course I do.” Ray furrows his eyebrows in confusion, which looks odd with his crooked grin. “Or did the kissing not make my intentions clear?”

“No, it did.” Lilith leans into the press of his palm against her cheek. “I just didn’t think you felt the same way about me until now.”

“How exactly do you feel about me?” Ray wants to know.

Lilith doesn’t want to say it out loud yet. It’s her turn to kiss him, so she does. When they come up for air, he presses their foreheads together. “You make me want the future,” she says.

What she means is, _I love you_.


	3. Better Off as Lovers and Not the Other Way Around

**Try to see with my vision: the breaking of membrane,**  
**the fragile fruit withering, embryos curling within eggs.**  
**Living beings so friable, so prone to overgrowth**  
**and imbalance. Remember, after all, that we can incinerate**  
**or incubate, that your atoms right now are smashing against**  
**the atoms of your chair. What is keeping you together?**  
**The pull of the moon. The arms of a lover. The gravity**  
**of cherry to cherry stone. Keep from being broken apart.**  
**Keep things from being broken apart. Gather together:**  
**thyroid, womb, heart. Build a nest.**

Jeannine Hall Gailey, “Advice from the Robot Scientist’s Daughter”

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 2**  
Better Off as Lovers and Not the Other Way Around

* * *

**December 2015**

* * *

Caitlin’s cryokinetic powers manifest two years after the particle accelerator explodes. Cisco takes one look at her and says, “winter is coming.”

“I’m not Sansa Stark!” Caitlin yells as the screen of his tablet frosts over.

“Is this because I said you have Tully hair?” Cisco asks. “I thought it was a compliment!”

“Maybe we can send her after whoever thought combining Sansa’s arc on the show with Jeyne Poole’s in the books was a good idea,” Lilith deadpans.

Lisa draws her gun when Caitlin gets too close to Cisco. At the same time, Cisco tries to yank Lisa behind him. Ronnie comes running from his office and reaches for Caitlin’s outstretched hand.

“No!” Lilith growls through clenched teeth as she sees Caitlin steal the warmth from her husband until nothing is left. “She’s a walking endothermic reaction. She’ll kill you.”

Ronnie steps back. Lilith stops time so Caitlin freezes metaphorically, not literally.

“How did you do that?” Cisco asks.

“I told time to stop sticking to her with my brain.” Lilith flops into a conveniently located swivel chair and winces as the motion jostles her headache. “I don’t know how long it’ll last, so you should probably dose her with that superpower suppressor she made last year sooner rather than later.”

Cisco built a gun capable of stopping Barry. Caitlin created an experimental vaccine designed to isolate the genetic mutation that causes metahuman abilities and suppress mutagenesis on a cellular level.

“It hasn’t been tested,” Ronnie protests. Caitlin was planning to test it on the metahumans in the pipeline, but she kept putting it off for ethical reasons; and then Leonard set them free, which rendered the point moot.

“No time like the present!” Cisco yells as he runs to retrieve the vaccine and a syringe from Caitlin’s lab.

Ronnie ends up giving her the actual injection, because Caitlin is the only medical doctor at S. T. A. R. Labs and she can’t do it herself. Cisco shudders sympathetically as the needle pierces her pale skin. Lisa huffs what might actually be a sigh of relief and sits in Cisco’s chair like a queen on her throne.

Stein returns with lunch from Big Belly Burger and narrows his eyes behind his spectacles. “Do I want to know?” he asks.

“I doubt it.” Lisa gives him her trademark saccharine smile.

“Caitlin is a White Walker,” Cisco says.

“Sansa Stark deserves better.” Lilith yawns through the word _better_.

“I’m going on a coffee run.” Ronnie shrugs on his coat. “Cait needs a cinnamon dolce latte.”

Stein mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _youths_ and drops the greasy takeout bags on Cisco’s desk before he flees to the relative peace and quiet of his office.

Caitlin blinks blearily at Cisco when she comes back to herself. “Where’s Ronnie?” she whispers. “Oh my god, did I hurt Ronnie?”

“Of course you didn’t.” Cisco squeezes her hand to show he’s not afraid to touch her. Which says a lot without saying anything at all.

* * *

**January 2016**

* * *

Leonard returns to Central City on a Tuesday, but he waits until Wednesday to show himself. Wednesday night is karaoke night at the _Press Box_ , just like Monday night is _Gilmore Girls_ rewatch night, Tuesday night is girls’ night, and Friday night is Coast City pizza night. So he ends up at one end of the bar watching his nemesis, a motley crew of terminal do-gooders, his sister, his sister’s not-boyfriend, and the girl he loves over a beer.

Lisa sees him first and acknowledges him with a wave, her fingers fluttering in his general direction. Cisco sees him second when he turns to scope out who his not-girlfriend is waving at. Barry makes a face that says _why me?_ Felicity gives her boyfriend a sympathetic pat on the shoulder—they weren’t together when he left, but he can tell they’re together now. Iris gives him the stinkeye. Eddie unconsciously reaches for his sidearm before he remembers he’s off-duty. Caitlin’s eyes turn an eerie ice blue when she perceives a threat, but they fade to brown when Ronnie squeezes her hand.

Lilith is asleep on the table with her face buried in the crook of her left elbow and her cane hooked over the back of her chair. Leonard is suddenly overwhelmed by how much he missed her.

Ray squeezes her shoulder. Lilith flails awake gracelessly. Leonard exhales a subdued laugh and smiles against the rim of his glass because he knows she wakes up almost violently, always. Ray grins and says something to her. Lilith snorts and says something back. Leonard notices the fingers of their left hands are intertwined on the table. Ray kisses her knuckles in a mock show of gallantry. Lilith somehow manages to curtsy and remain seated at the same time. Leonard stops cold as jealousy unfurls in his gut.

Here’s a contingency he hasn’t planned for: when you tell the girl you love you’re not serious about her and then leave town for half a year, she might be dating somebody else when you get back.

Lilith ends up singing “Set Fire to the Rain” and stops time to keep Ray from walking away during the second rendition of _’cause there’s a side to you that I never knew, never knew / all the things you’d say, they were never true, never true / and the games you’d play, you would always win, always win_. Apparently she can keep time from sticking to people for longer than five minutes at a time. Who knew? Not her.

“Did you use your power to make me stay?” Ray arches one eyebrow.

“Maybe,” Lilith elongates the vowel sounds sheepishly and tugs her lower lip between her teeth.

“Lil, you sang an Adele power ballad to your ex,” Ray protests. He can’t stop thinking about the night he realized Felicity didn’t love him back because she was in love with Oliver. “Which has not over it written all over it.”

Lilith doesn’t have the spoons for this conversation. “Do you remember how angry I got when you showed me the designs for the brace?” she asks.

Ray cocks his head. “I remember how you didn’t speak to me for a week.”

“Because I thought you wanted me to be Lilith Clay, ballet prodigy, swan queen, able-bodied.” Lilith can feel her knuckles clench white on the handle of her cane. “Which hurt my feelings.”

“Yeah,” Ray says flatly. “I get that. Which is why I can’t do this again.”

“Oh my god,” Lilith flails the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane in exasperation, “this isn’t an Olicity situation.”

“What,” Ray says.

“I’m not Felicity, Len isn’t Oliver, and I’m not dating you in a failed attempt to get over him.” Lilith is angry with everyone—mad at Ray for not trusting her, mad at Felicity for breaking his heart, mad at Leonard for showing up where he knew she would be, mad at herself for not being over her ex—but there is one thing she knows for sure and certain. “Ray, you had me the moment I realized you didn’t want to fix me, you just wanted me to be happy. Which happened before I was with Len, for the record. I love you for that,” her tone softens as she bites the bullet and clarifies, “I’m in love with you.”

“Are you in love with him too?” Ray asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Leonard is watching them with cold, calculating eyes. Lilith has a hunch he’s planning something diabolical. “Yup,” she squares her shoulders to keep them from hunching, “but my feelings for Len aren’t more or less than my feelings for you. I’m choosing you,” she pokes his chest to make her point. “Okay?”

Lilith is the worst liar Ray has ever met. Which is how he knows she’s telling the truth. So he finds himself oddly fascinated rather than heartbroken. “Okay,” Ray says. “How does that work, being in love with two people at once?”

“I don’t know,” Lilith shrugs with one shoulder, “it is what it is. I keep trying to come up with a good metaphor involving different flavors of ice cream or different ways to cook potatoes. Like, I love fries but I also love hash browns.”

Ray almost chokes on his own laughter. “What?”

“See,” Lilith huffs, “it doesn’t work.”

Ray grins at her. “So am I the fries or the hash browns?”

“You’re a dork,” she wraps the arm that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane around him. Her thumb traces small circles between his shoulder blades through the fabric of his dress shirt.

“Yours,” he retorts as his hand splays over her lower back. He pulls her closer until no negative space is left between their bodies. His belt buckle is probably going to leave a corner-shaped bruise in the flesh of her waist. She couldn’t care less.

“Yup,” Lilith says. “You’re my dork.”

Ray is built like a brick shithouse and it makes her feel small in the best way, like the safest place to be in the whole wide world is in his arms. Still she shivers. All the warm fuzzies in the universe can’t make her forget that Leonard is looking at her. She knows he caught the tremor in her spine and feels him smirking from across the room.

Lilith loves Ray, but she loves Leonard too. She has no idea how to stop.

 _I can see the future_ , she thinks, _and I’m still so unprepared_.

* * *

Sometimes the visions come in dreams, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t when you’re asleep. Lilith has a recurring nightmare that involves Captain Cold and Heatwave calling out the Flash and the Atom on live television and people dying in the crossfire.

Ray can feel her distancing herself from him as she curls into herself and goes somewhere—or somewhen—he can’t follow. Sometimes he wonders if she knows his life has been one long black parade of watching his loved ones die and not being able to save them. First his father, then his mother, then his brother, and then finally Anna. Lilith doesn’t need saving, but her powers take a toll.

“Not every hero wears a mask,” he tells her late one night as she lies awake with her head on his bare chest, her fingers tracing neurotic swirls on his skin.

She doesn’t see herself as a heroine. She’s seen herself as a heroine in alternate universes and it never ends well for her: death by malfunctioning android, resurrection by a creeper with mommy issues, reanimation by blackest night, and gouging out her own eyeballs are the possibilities from the darkest timelines. She actually texted Felicity at fuck off o’clock to make sure Brother Blood was dead after a particularly vomit-inducing vision.

Ray strokes his knuckles loosely over the curve of her spine. Their legs tangle together between his sheets, the ones with the ridiculously high thread count.

“Ours is the superior reality,” she mumbles against his clavicle.

* * *

**February 2016**

* * *

Lilith manages to avoid Leonard for almost two weeks. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’s giving her space. Maybe he just doesn’t want to add stalking to his list of criminal activities. Which she appreciates. Contrary to popular belief, stalking isn’t sexy.

Neither is emerging from the elevator at S. T. A. R. Labs to find your ex pointing a lethal weapon at your current boyfriend. Ray is wearing one gauntlet, the plasma cannon in his palm readying to fire.

 _The hell_ , Lilith thinks. Aloud, she says: “Len, the only reason I’m not stopping time right now and taking your gun away is because I have a migraine. I’m just here to infodump my visions and then I’m going to sleep for a week. Now tell me why you’re pointing your cold gun at my boyfriend before I change my mind.”

“Hello, Lilith.” Leonard says her name lowly. Lilith wonders if the intimacy in his voice is for her or for Ray. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“The hell it doesn’t.” Lilith retorts, “you said whatever we had wasn’t serious and then you left. I thought we didn’t have a future, but I was hoping I might be wrong. I actually looked into the future to see if you were coming back—”

“I’m here for you,” Leonard clarifies. “This doesn’t concern him.”

“Ray,” Lilith sighs and flops into her papasan chair, “power down.”

“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Ray says as his gauntlet stops glowing.

“Yes you are.” Lilith folds her arms and puts on her serious face. “I’m a damsel. I’m in distress. I can handle this.”

“Have a nice day.” Leonard smirks as his tone turns caustic.

Ray blinks. “I can’t think of a comeback because I’m genuinely shocked that he’s seen _Hercules_ ,” he informs Lilith.

“I do have a sister,” Leonard says.

Lilith doesn’t bother mentioning that the Disney version of _Hercules_ came out when Lisa was nine and Leonard was seventeen because nine-year-old Lisa probably had teenage Leonard wrapped around her little finger. “Ray,” she makes shooing motions with her hands, “skedaddle.”

Ray bends down and kisses her temple. “I love you,” he whispers it in her ear so she knows he’s not saying it for Leonard’s benefit.

Lilith clenches her thighs at the sensation of his breath on her skin. _Not now, ladyboner_ , she thinks. “I love you too,” she says, “now please go away.”

Leonard doesn’t lower his weapon until Ray is in the elevator and the sliding doors are closed. “How sweet,” he says as he tugs his goggles down around his neck.

“Shut up.” Lilith huffs, “you said you’re here for me. What do you want?”

“To talk,” Leonard says.

“So talk,” Lilith retorts.

“I hurt your feelings.” Leonard sits in the swivel chair she keeps around for company with his gun in his lap.

“No,” Lilith says firmly, “you broke my heart. I cried over you. I cut my hair shorter than it’s ever been because you used to undo it like foreplay and then braid it for me in the morning. I had girl talk with your sister.”

Leonard didn’t see that coming. Lilith and Lisa had merely tolerated each other before he left. “What did she say?” he wants to know.

“Lisa told me you left her when you turned eighteen,” Lilith says, “but she thinks you didn’t take her with you because you thought she deserved better than a life of crime. I think you’re terrible at feelings.”

“That’s true,” he says. “I’m also in love with you.”

Lilith doesn’t wear incredulous well. “How dare you,” she bites down on the word _dare_ , “you don’t get to say that to me.”

“Tell me you don’t feel the same way and I’ll go,” Leonard retorts in his calmest voice, the one that means he’s trying not to lose his cool.

Lilith squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head so her hair falls into her face. “I can’t do that,” her voice breaks a little at the word _can’t_ , “but please go away.”

“No.” Leonard scoots his chair closer to her. “Not until you say it.”

“I hate you.” Lilith forces herself to look at him even though she can feel the tears clumping at the corners of her eyes. She doesn’t have to be precognitive to know this conversation is part of his plan to win her back. He wouldn’t be telling her how he feels unless he plans to do something about it.

Leonard smirks at her. He can work with that. He was selfish enough to leave her, but not enough to let her go. “I hate you too,” he informs her, “you changed the game.”

“This is not a game,” Lilith snarls. “If you hurt Ray—”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Leonard moves to touch her cheek. Lilith flinches away and winces as the motion escalates her migraine. “I won’t hurt you again,” he promises.

“I don’t believe you,” Lilith says through clenched teeth. “I know you too well. I know you’re a criminal and a liar. I never expected more from you than that.”

“But you wanted more.” Leonard clenches his jaw at the word _more_.

“Of course I did.” She squashes the urge to smooth out the tension in his jaw with her teeth. Everything feels achingly raw and too real. She squares her shoulders and says, “I do love you.”

Leonard nods and scoots back, satisfied for now. When he leaves, his parting shot echoes through the otherwise empty office space. “I’ll see you around,” he says.

Lilith doesn’t know whether to take that as a threat or a promise.

* * *

At some point what’s left of the Santini family trickles back into Central City like polluted rainwater running downhill. Frank Santini takes Lilith hostage on Galentine’s Day to lure Leonard into a trap and avenge his brother on Valentine’s Day. Rafael Santini is actually the one who abducts her from the restaurant where she, Patty, Fiona, Kathy, Sandra, Iris, Felicity, Lisa, Shawna, Caitlin, and Clarissa are eating breakfast for dinner when she gets up to pee. Apparently precognitive metahumans aren’t immune to phenobarbital. Who knew? Not her.

Lilith stops time after the sedative is out of her system and saves herself. When she locates her phone and calls Iris, she can hear Ray yelling in the background and Leonard shouting back at him.

“Lil?” Iris says her name as loudly as possible to shut them up. Ray stops yelling when Leonard stops shouting.

“I’m fine.” Lilith yawns through the word _fine_. “I just don’t have the spoons for a car chase, so I need someone to come get me. Not Barry,” she adds as an afterthought, “super speed makes me queasy. Maybe he can take the mobsters to jail? I electrocuted them a whole bunch, so transport should be easy as pie.”

“Hey!” Iris yelps indignantly as someone steals her phone.

“Frank Santini is a dead man,” Leonard snarls into the receiver.

“No,” Lilith says firmly. “Frank Santini is tied up and gagged with his own left sock, Rafael Santini is on a one way trip back to Gotham, and the rest of the family is getting intimately acquainted with the taste of their own sweaty feet.”

“Gross,” Leonard says with a fondness that makes her heart ache a little.

“Yup.” Lilith nods before she remembers he can’t see her. “Now give the phone to Ray. I can hear his plasma cannon powering up in the background.”

“Cool it,” Leonard tells her boyfriend, “she’s fine.”

“No thanks to you,” Ray snaps and snatches the phone from him. “Felicity is tracking your phone, Lil. I’ll come and get you once she has a location.”

“No flying,” Lilith says, “flight makes me queasy too. And bring Len. And a pie.”

“I’m not spending Valentine’s Day with him,” Ray says.

“I’m not asking you to,” Lilith says, “I just want him to see that I’m okay before you and I spend what’s left of Valentine’s Day together. Alone with the pie and the Jacuzzi.”

“I think you love the Jacuzzi more than me,” Ray says in mock accusation.

Lilith can hear the warmth of his smile in his voice and she smiles back even though he can’t see her. “Yup,” she teases. “I’m only dating you for the amenities.”

Which is patently untrue. After he started seeing her, Ray learned pretty quickly that wooing and grand gestures—like renting diamond necklaces worth millions of dollars, gifting couture dresses, and buying out entire restaurants for an evening—aren’t her jam. “I’m paying for the pie,” Ray says.

“Okay.” Lilith electrocutes Frank Santini again, just in case. Going Dutch on a pie is not the hill she wants to die on. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Ray hangs up and hands the phone back to Iris. “Let’s go,” he says to Leonard.

Leonard is content to sit quietly in the passenger’s seat as they drive to the outskirts of the city. Ray lasts fifty-six seconds of uncomfortable silence before he starts talking.

“So,” Ray side-eyes Leonard from the driver’s seat. “Did she ever let you pay for anything?” he wants to know.

“No,” Leonard says. “Lilith doesn’t like it when people try to buy her love.”

“Loren Jupiter pays her rent,” Ray protests.

“Loren Jupiter used her disability as a publicity stunt to cover up the scandal of her existence,” Leonard points out. “So she figures he owes her, not the other way around.”

“I want to give her nice things because I think she deserves them,” Ray says, “not so she’ll owe me.”

“It’s not about you,” Leonard says. “I kept tabs on her after the kidnapping in case she used the resources at her disposal to take me out of the game. Loren Jupiter wheeled her around until people stopped talking about his affair and started talking about how generous he was being with his crippled bastard daughter. It’s about her. How she never wants to feel used like that again.”

Ray stops at a red light and looks at Leonard. Anger is evident in every line of his face, his teeth and jaw clenched, his blue eyes cold. “Wow,” he says, “you really do love her.”

“I’m going to win her back.” Leonard looks at Ray to gauge his reaction. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Lil makes her own choices,” Ray keeps his eyes on the road after the light turns green, “she’s not a prize to be won.”

Leonard smirks. He can work with that. “Lilith wouldn’t have to choose if you’d learn to share,” he suggests.

Ray has no idea how to respond to that, but he ends up thinking about it for the rest of the drive. Lilith had feelings for him the whole time she was with Leonard and she’s had feelings for Leonard the whole time she’s been with him. Lilith chose Ray. Opening up their relationship to include the other man she loves won’t change that.

 _Maybe learning to share wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world_ , Ray thinks.

Lilith is waiting for them on the front steps of the Santini summer house. It’s not a secret location by any means; they found it on Google Maps after Felicity tracked her phone. Lilith is wearing the same dress she wore for Galentine’s Day shenanigans the night before and her bangs are sticking up at an odd angle near her temple. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she deadpans, “get me the hell out of here.”

Ray literally sweeps her off her feet and buries his face in the space between her neck and shoulder. Lilith wraps her arms around his neck and lets her legs dangle in the air. “I’m fine,” she says when he pulls back to look at her. “I smell like death and taxes, but I’m fine.”

Leonard picks up her cane when it clatters against the driveway gravel and hands it back to her after Ray puts her down. “Is that blood on your shoes?” he asks.

Lilith squashes the urge to hug him and shrugs so she has something to do with herself. “I may or may not have kicked Frank Santini in the face,” she says. Which means she totally kicked Frank Santini in the face and she regrets nothing. Not even the bloodstains on her floral print Doc Martens.

“So you kick everyone who kidnaps you in the face?” Leonard grins at her, “and here I thought I was special.”

Ray leans in to whisper something in her ear. Lilith looks at him incredulously. “Really?” she says.

“Really.” Ray smiles at her as his hand traces the curve of her spine through the fabric of her dress.

Lilith puts her hand on his chest, her palm close to his heart. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Ray nods, removing his hand from the small of her back.

Lilith bites her lower lip in a futile attempt to contain her own smile. “Okay,” she says. Suddenly she feels shy. Which is ridiculous, because these men both know her very well. _Is this actually happening?_ she thinks.

“What did you say to her?” Leonard wants to know.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ before she hobbles over to Leonard. Slowly she puts the arm that isn’t preoccupied with her cane around his waist and leans into him with her whole body, making her intentions clear. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi there.” Leonard twists his hand into her hair before he kisses her. It feels like coming home.

Ray waits for jealousy, but it doesn’t come. Watching his girlfriend kiss someone else isn’t devastating like he thought it might be.

“Okay,” Lilith exhales anther soft _woo_ , “shotgun.” With that, she untangles herself from Leonard. “I guess we are spending Valentine’s Day with him,” she informs Ray as she sits in the passenger seat.

“I guess we are.” Ray smiles hesitantly at Leonard before he gets back in the car.

Lilith starts talking after Ray starts the car. “So here’s how this is going to work,” she says. “First we’re going back to my apartment so I can shower alone and change into clean clothes. Then we’re going to grab lunch and talk this whole thing through.”

“Then what?” Leonard wants to know.

“If that goes well,” Lilith meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, “we’ll end up at Ray’s penthouse with the pink lemonade in the fridge and the scotch old enough to order its own scotch in the liquor cabinet and the Jacuzzi. If not, I’m going to kick you in the face again. I won’t let you manipulate Ray into doing something he isn’t comfortable with,” she says, “and I won’t let Ray compromise himself to keep me happy.” Lilith glances sidelong at Ray. “Are you even into dudes?” she asks.

“I’m not really attracted to anyone I’m not emotionally invested in,” Ray shrugs, “but the feelings involved don’t have to be good ones. I have a lot of feelings about him.”

“How do you know I am?” Leonard wants to know.

“What, into dudes?” Leonard nods once. “Bitch, please.” Lilith scoffs. “I’ve seen the way you look at Barry. I’m not blind. At least not in this reality. I’m bi as hell and so are you.”

“That’s true.” Leonard smirks at her.

“Wow,” Ray grins at Leonard in the rearview mirror, “you totally have a type.”

“Yup,” Lilith yawns, “his type is people who can beat him at his own game. Which you could probably do if you ever ended up on opposite sides in a real fight,” she looks over her shoulder and points a warning finger at Leonard, “but don’t fight Ray. I will end you.”

“Ray is a big boy,” Leonard somehow manages to turn that sentence into half-condescension and half-innuendo, “he can take care of himself.”

“Ray has a huge heart,” Lilith retorts, “and he has watched pretty much everyone he ever loved die. Which is why he does things like signing his multibillion dollar company over to a girl who dumped him a week before and buying S. T. A. R. Labs after he and Cisco hung out once. Ray wants to save the world, but he also wants to belong somewhere. Which makes him the ideal mark for someone like you, who makes a habit of manipulating people and exploiting their weaknesses so the odds in any given situation are always in your favor.”

Ray keeps one hand on the wheel and reaches for her with the other, a nonverbal _I love you_. Lilith intertwines their fingers and squeezes his hand, a wordless _I love you too_.

Leonard grins at her in the rearview mirror, white teeth flashing in the dim light filtering through the tinted windows of the car. “If this goes well,” he says in the smooth voice he uses to make winning speeches, “everybody wins.”

“Not if Ray regrets it later,” she says firmly, “you didn’t see what it was like for me after you left. I didn’t get out of bed for a week because I looked into my future to see if you were coming back. I saw a lot of things—most of which won’t occur in this timeline—but I didn’t see this coming.” Lilith yawns through the word _see_ , then clarifies: “probably because it wasn’t a possibility until now.”

Leonard doesn’t wear guilt well. It’s not an emotion he feels very often. What happened with the Santini family is his fault. Which is why he sent the Flash after his other enemies before he left. Anybody else who might hurt Lilith to get to him is behind bars or dead. “I left because you became my weakness,” he says. What he means is, _I love you_.

Lilith leans her seat back so she can look at him without using the mirror or kinking her neck. “I forgive you for being terrible at feelings,” she says. What she means is, _I love you too_.

Leonard kisses her temple where her bangs are sticking up. Lilith kisses the hollow under his jaw without letting go of Ray’s hand. Leonard puts one hand on Ray’s shoulder as he presses his mouth against hers. Lilith moans softly when he bites her lower lip. Leonard makes a noise in the back of his throat when she licks into his mouth, the kiss turning messy at an odd angle.

Ray stops the car abruptly. Leonard reluctantly stops kissing Lilith. “Problem?” he asks.

“No,” Ray draws out the vowel sound awkwardly, “the opposite, actually.”

Lilith snorts and says, “Not now, boner.”

“Pretty much,” Ray says sheepishly. “I might need to take a cold shower.”

“I’m not making a pun out of that even though Captain Cold is in the car,” Lilith informs him, “be proud.”

Once they’re all in her apartment, Lilith showers slowly so the whole kidnapping experience swirls down the drain. There is a plastic chair bolted to the tile floor of her shower that she uses because she can’t stay standing long enough to wash her hair. After she takes her meds, brushes her teeth, flosses, wraps her hair in a towel, and rubs lotion on her skin, she sits in the damp chair to let it all sink in—the lotion and the impending threesome with her boyfriend and her ex. _The hell_ , she thinks. _Is this actually happening?_

As if on cue, Leonard knocks on the bathroom door. His footsteps have a different rhythm than Ray’s, so she knows it’s him before he speaks. “What are you doing in there?” he wants to know.

“Girl stuff,” Lilith says indignantly, “shaving my legs.” Which is untrue because she shaved her legs while the water was running, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Tell me you didn’t shave between your legs,” Leonard says.

“How about no,” Lilith scoffs, “it grows back itchy. Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

“Tell me you’re not reconsidering this,” Leonard says. She can hear a thread of desperation in his voice.

“Hell no.” Lilith wraps herself in a fluffy towel that covers her chest and hits her below the knee. Which makes it longer than some dresses she owns. After she removes the wet towel from her hair and hangs it on the drying rack, she hobbles into the hallway.

Ray offers her a big black box with a red bow on it. “I thought you might want to wear this,” he says. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“I got you something too,” Leonard eyes the gift box as she expertly balances it on the makeshift shelf of her bent arm and her chest while holding the towel in place, “but it can wait.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to get dressed now.” When they both attempt to follow her into her bedroom she clarifies, “alone.”

What’s in the box is lingerie: a black silk and cream lace bra and panty set with a matching garter belt. Lilith lets Ray buy expensive lingerie for her because it’s technically a present for him too. She puts the panties on over the garters for two reasons: One, she probably won’t be taking the garter belt off during sex. Two, not having to unfasten the garters makes going to the bathroom a lot easier. She hobbles over to her closet and picks out a dress, a sleeveless floral print with a pointed collar and black buttons from collarbone to mid-thigh. Its skirt covers the garters, but not the lace tops of her thigh highs. She puts on the leather jacket Leonard left at her apartment months ago and steps into her ballet flats. She exhales another soft _woo_ , grips the handle of her cane, and leaves her bedroom. Leonard is hanging up on someone when she returns. Ray is sitting on her giant couch.

“Is that my jacket?” Leonard wants to know.

“Not anymore,” Lilith retorts.

“Keep it,” he smirks at her, “it looks better on you.”

Ray groans softly. “Why are we having lunch, again?”

“Because we’re going to have all of the sex,” Lilith deadpans as she hobbles to the door, “all of it. Preferably without awkward stomach growling to kill the mood.”

Leonard looks from Ray to Lilith and back again as his smirk becomes a grin. “Let’s go,” he says.

At lunch, Lilith stops eating and points her empty fork at Leonard. “What are you playing at?” she asks. “What’s your endgame?”

Leonard tilts his head and focuses on her. “You,” he says.

“I got that,” Lilith presses her mouth into a thin line, “but how, exactly?” she glances at Ray, and clarifies, “do you want to be our boyfriend? Or do you want to date me but with threesomes as a bonus feature? I mean, do you even like Ray as a person? Or do you just think you can’t have me without him?”

“I’m not a fan of the heroics,” Leonard shrugs and a smiles briefly at Ray, “but he grows on you.”

“Thanks,” Ray smiles back, “I think.”

“In an alternate universe you’re actually on the same team,” Lilith informs them, “and for all intents and purposes you’re both heroes.”

Ray gapes, a morsel of food falling from his open mouth and back onto his plate. Leonard frowns, the space between his eyebrows furrowing.

“I know, right?” Lilith laughs, “and sometimes you haven’t even met me.”

“Ours is the superior reality,” Ray grins. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

“Yup,” Lilith says. “Because I’d rather be disabled and alive than brainwashed or dead.”

Once upon a time, Ray might’ve asked if she would rather be able-bodied and alive. Now he knows the answer is _No_. If she were able-bodied then she wouldn’t be this version of herself. Lilith actually likes this version of herself most of the time. Being able-bodied isn’t what makes her whole.

“I love you,” Ray reaches across the table for her hand and squeezes her fingers.

Lilith offers her other hand to Leonard and smiles when he takes it. “I love you too,” she says to both of them, and means it.

After they finish eating lunch and negotiating the terms of their relationship, Leonard texts Barry from the elevator as they rise toward Ray’s penthouse, **is it done?**

Barry texts back: **yes, now stop ruining Valentine’s Day for everyone**. Apparently the scarlet speedster thinks Leonard is using him in a futile attempt to win Lilith back. Barry doesn’t realize that his endgame is a threesome in which everybody wins, not just him.

Leonard exhales a snort of laughter as the sliding doors open. “After you,” he says.

“Okay,” Lilith shrugs and hobbles inside. “Oh my god,” her voice softens with shock and awe. _Lady Lilith_ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the original oil painting and the watercolor replica, are propped up against the wall at the end of the hallway.

Ray walks over to examine the paintings and reads the inscription on the frame of the watercolor. “‘Beware of her fair hair, for she excels all women in the magic of her locks, and when she twines them round a young man’s neck she will not ever set him free again.’ Goethe’s _Faust_ , translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley.”

“So you said you weren’t serious about me and then you stole both versions of the painting I told you I was named after on our first date.” Lilith doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When in doubt, she laughs in little shrieks that shake her like sobs. “Oh my god, Delaware. I should’ve known,” she presses her palm over her mouth, “the oil painting belongs to the Delaware Art Museum.”

“Not anymore,” Leonard says smugly.

Lilith sits on the couch and exhales another soft _woo_. “I’m surprised you didn’t steal the chalk sketch from Tel Aviv,” she says.

“I thought about it,” Leonard admits.

“Of course you did.” Lilith snorts.

“Lil, how can you condone this?” Ray asks in a tone that’s one part accusation and one part curiosity.

Lilith shrugs. “Len, was anyone hurt or killed during the robbery?” she wants to know.

“No,” Leonard says. “No one will ever know these aren’t where they’re supposed to be. I commissioned forgeries of the frames and the paintings to leave behind.”

“Yeah.” Ray folds his arms and raises his eyebrows like a challenge. “Because it’s not like experts authenticate art for a living or anything.”

Leonard folds his arms and tilts his head. “I’m a thief,” he says. “It’s what I do.”

Ray opens his mouth to argue. Lilith sighs and shucks off her jacket. Leonard and Ray both turn to look at her as the jacket hits the floor. “Okay,” she starts unbuttoning her dress and toes her shoes off, “we can debate the moral implications of replacing Pre-Raphaelite paintings with forgeries. Or,” she shifts her weight onto her cane and steps out of her dress, “we can have all of the sex. Your choice.”

Ray sighs. “You’re not playing fair,” he informs her.

“You’re fundamentally different people,” Lilith retorts. “You’re never going to agree on certain things, but that doesn’t mean this can’t work,” she hobbles past them into Ray’s bedroom. “You just have to meet each other halfway.” With that, she flops gracelessly on top of the covers and exhales another soft _woo_.

Leonard removes his coat and unstraps the holster on his thigh that holds his cold gun. Disarming himself and leaving his weapon out of reach is his version of meeting them halfway. Ray takes his shirt off. Leonard squeezes Ray’s bare shoulder with one hand and touches his face with the other, the rough pad of his thumb scraping over his cheek and his fingers curled against the nape of his neck. Ray presses Leonard against the door of his bedroom, his elbows knocking into the wood on either side of his head when he kisses him. Ray has always liked kissing as an end in itself, not necessarily as a precursor to sex. Leonard kisses with the same meticulous intensity he applies to everything else, using the hand on his face to control the angle and the pressure. Ray moans at the rasp of stubble against his jaw and feels Leonard smirk against his mouth.

Ray breaks the kiss with a grin. “I guess some things do work on the first try,” he says.

Lilith makes a high noise in her throat that sounds like _hng_  and thinks, _wow_.

Leonard looks at her and his pupils are blown so wide that the blue of his eyes is almost blacked out. “Ray,” he says after he takes off his shoes and pulls his shirt over his head, “I need you to hold her down.”

“Why?” Ray wants to know as he kicks off his own shoes and takes off his pants.

“Because I’m going to eat her out until she can’t walk for a reason that has nothing to do with her permanently destabilized knee,” Leonard explains as he kneels before her at the foot of the bed and hooks his thumbs over the waistband of her panties.

Lilith lifts her hips and bends her uninjured leg so he can slide them off. “Okay,” she inhales sharply after she realizes she forgot to breathe and exhales another soft _woo_.

Ray sits behind her on the bed and pulls her into his lap. One of his hands is holding hers, the other follows the arm circling her torso to map the curve of her waist. Leonard puts her thighs on his shoulders, his fingertips lingering over the scar tissue on the back of her calf.

Lilith realizes with a jolt of déjà-vu that she saw this months ago when Eddie was missing, before she met Ray. “Oh my god,” she whispers.

“No,” Leonard smirks. “Just me.”

Lilith manages to roll her eyes before he spreads her open with his fingers, the fingernails her free hand scraping through his short hair while he sucks a bruise into the inside of her thigh. Ray squeezes her other hand and kisses her neck while Leonard flicks his tongue over her hole to taste her cunt.

 _This was going to happen the whole time_ , she thinks, _we were always supposed to end up here_.

Ray takes his hand off her waist so he can pull down the cup of her bra and roll her left nipple between his fingers. Leonard curls two fingers inside her and his ensuing  _yes_ shudders through her before he drags his tongue over her clit. Ray tilts her head up with the knuckles of their joined hands to kiss her slick and deep.

Lilith stops thinking coherent thoughts for a long time.

* * *

Ray is a morning person when he isn’t working so hard he forgets to sleep for days at a time. Leonard sleeps lightly just in case somebody tries to get the drop on him. Lilith is more nocturnal than diurnal most of the time, but all of the sex overloads her brain with so many endorphins that she actually sleeps for seven uninterrupted hours.

Lilith wakes up in Leonard’s arms when Ray gently squeezes her shoulder. “No,” she buries her nose underneath Leonard’s collarbone and grins when his grip tightens on her hip, “too early.”

“Lil,” Ray says in the most uncomfortable tone she’s ever heard him use, “your father is here.”

“The hell?” Lilith groans. “Which one?”

“The one you hate,” Ray informs her.

Lilith makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat as she untangles herself from Leonard and sits up. “Why?” she wants to know.

Ray takes a second to register the question because his girlfriend is topless. “Apparently he heard you were kidnapped and he came to make sure you’re all right,” he shrugs.

Lilith grabs her cane and hobbles over to her designated drawer in Ray’s dresser. “How?” she wonders as she puts on a clean pair of panties. Then she scoops Leonard’s shirt up off the floor and leans her body against the dresser as she pulls it over her head.

“I don’t know,” Ray says, “but he’s sitting at the breakfast bar.”

“The hell,” Lilith squawks indignantly as Leonard gets out of bed, “you invited him in? Now he won’t leave until I talk to him.”

“Maybe you should,” Ray says hesitantly, “he seems genuinely worried.”

“I don’t care,” Lilith retorts as Leonard walks over to the dresser and steals a pair of Ray’s sweatpants.

“Lil, he’s your father,” Ray says. “If I could talk to my dad, I would.”

“If I could trade my parents for yours, I would.” Lilith says flatly, “but I can’t, so you’re stuck with a Dead Parents Club membership and I’m stuck with parents who wish I was never born or treat me like a broken thing. Which sucks, but it is what it is.”

“Lilith,” Leonard puts his hand on her neck and tilts her chin up, forcing her to focus on him instead of Ray or the looming presence of her biological father in the kitchen, “calm down.”

“I’m sorry, Ray.” Lilith sighs. “I’ll go talk to him like an adult.” With that, she hobbles out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

Ray stays in the bedroom to calm down and give her some space. When he emerges Loren has made his exit, unfortunately not pursued by a bear. “Why isn’t the elevator moving?” he wants to know.

“I got cut off.” Lilith yawns through the word _cut_. “I kept time from sticking to him so Felicity could transfer my money somewhere in case he tries to freeze my assets. I’ll be in the Jacuzzi.” With that, she tucks her phone back inside its designated pocket in her purse and hobbles back into the bedroom.

Leonard has seen the expression on her face approximately twice before. Once when he was holding her hostage, and again the night before he left when she walked away without looking back. Ray moves to follow her but Leonard stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Lilith doesn’t like to cry in front of people,” he explains.

“I know,” Ray turns on his heels to face Leonard and folds his arms defensively, “she’s my girlfriend too.”

It occurs to Leonard that being in a relationship with two people means offering twice the emotional support. How unfortunate. “What did she mean when she said you watched everyone you love die?” he wants to know.

Ray cradles his elbows with his hands like he’s trying to give himself a hug. “My father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when I was in high school,” he begins, “and he didn’t survive to see me graduate. My mother had sickle-cell disease. My brother Dan had it too, which means Dad had the gene but not the disease. Mom had a symptomatic stroke when I was in college. Dan died of heart failure caused by pulmonary hypertension when I was getting my second doctorate.” Ray pauses to breathe. “My fiancée Anna was murdered two years ago,” he continues in a strained voice, “right in front of me. I couldn’t save her either. That’s why I became the Atom.”

“My mother left after Lisa was born,” Leonard says flatly. “My father took it out on us until he went to jail. Some kids are better off without their parents,” his jaw clenches as he bites down on the word _parents_. “Congratulations on not being one of them.”

Ray doesn’t know what to say, so he takes his hand and squeezes his fingers. Leonard has no idea how to respond to that, so he squeezes back.

When they end up at S. T. A. R. Labs later that day, Lisa takes one look at her brother and smirks.

“So the Snart smirk is genetic.” Lilith whispers conspiratorially to Ray, “I knew it.”

“I’d high five you if you weren’t having kinky sex with my brother,” Lisa says. To Leonard, she adds: “Jerk.”

“Trainwreck,” Leonard says fondly.

“Is polyamory kinky?” Ray wants to know. “Or just an alternative lifestyle?”

“Oh my god,” Lilith sighs and presses the heel of her hand against her forehead.

Felicity awkwardly elongates the vowel sound in her _oh_ until it becomes an _ooh_. Cisco gapes so wide a piece of red licorice falls out of his mouth and onto his desk. Caitlin makes an indignant noise and an icicle forms spontaneously on the ceiling above them.

“Okay, Killer Frost,” Lilith hobbles sideways to avoid a potential death by icicle, “dial it back.”

“So you all had sex with each other,” Felicity flails her hands in their general direction.

Leonard tilts his head back and looks up at the icicle. Ray says, “Yes.”               

“How does that work?” Cisco wonders.

Leonard opens his mouth to explain in graphic detail and watch everyone squirm. Lilith yanks his hood down over his face to avert that crisis and hobbles to meet an unoccupied swivel chair.

“What, do you want to know which positions we used?” Lilith flops into the chair and folds her arms defensively. “Or are you wondering about the emotional component?”

“Both,” Caitlin blurts as the icicle falls and shatters on the floor of the cortex.

“I’m fine, emotionally.” Ray reassures Felicity in particular, “this isn’t like what happened last year with you and me and Oliver.”

Felicity makes an indignant noise because she’s still embarrassed over how badly she treated Ray. Sometimes she can’t believe they’re still friends, but she’s eternally thankful for that. It’s actually one of the reasons why she left Starling City. Felicity didn’t want to make the mistake of being with somebody again when she should’ve been figuring things out for herself. Sometimes she wonders if she moved on too fast, but she couldn’t regret falling for Barry if she tried.

* * *

**March 2016**

* * *

Jupiter Incorporated owns the apartment building where Lilith and Patty share a lease on an apartment neither of them spend much time at anymore. After they get evicted, Patty finally moves in with Fiona for real and Lilith ends up staying at the penthouse while she looks for a place of her own. Ray hints that she should make their temporary living situation permanent during the first week and drops all pretense at subtlety by the end of the month.

“I don’t know why you can’t just move in with me.” Ray rests his chin on her shoulder and looks at the screen of her laptop.

Lilith shrugs, her other shoulder hunching to meet her cheek. “It’s too soon for you.”

“We’ve been dating for six months. We’ve known each other for almost a year.” Ray laughs, his breath warm on her skin. Anna had asked him to wait on proposing until she finished law school, and he respected that—but then she died and he regretted not marrying her sooner. Now he doesn’t want to wait. “It isn’t too soon for me.”

Lilith sighs because seeing the future doesn’t mean you know when it’s time to make the choices that shape it. “It’s not that I don’t want to live with you. I just don’t want to live in an apartment. I want a house,” she clarifies, “I want a home.”

“Oh.” Ray scrapes his teeth over the shell of her ear and gently bites her earlobe. “So you’ll move in with me if we buy a house and make it a home.”

“I didn’t say that.” Lilith swallows the high-pitched noise that blooms in her throat at the sensation. “Nowhere in there did I say we should buy a house.”

“Which is why I’m saying it,” Ray retorts as he closes her laptop and banishes it to the nightstand, “we should buy a house.”

“Are we doing this with or without Len?” Lilith wants to know as Ray yanks his shirt over his head.

“Well, it wouldn’t be home for you without him,” Ray gives her a lopsided grin as his pants hit the floor, “would it?”

“No,” Lilith shakes her head so her hair falls into her face as she smiles, “it wouldn’t.”

Ray sits on the bed and pulls her into his lap. Lilith wraps her legs around him to avoid putting weight on her knee.

She sees a telepathic boy with her hair and his grin. She sees a chronokinetic girl with freckles and harsh blue eyes. She sees a caveman bash in the skulls of two boys as a screaming girl flees toward a chrome and glass sphere. She sees another version of Ray crack wise and another version of Leonard roll his eyes behind his goggles before something crashes through the ceiling. She sees another version of herself going into labor when the particle accelerator explodes. She sees a strawberry blonde girl with hollow bones and vestigial wings.

Ray knows her precognition face pretty well by now. He’s aware that her visions can be psychometric. He puts his hands on her shoulders, strokes his thumbs over her clavicle, and waits for her to come back to him. “Where did you go?” he wants to know. “What did you see?”

“The past. The future. Elsewhere.” Lilith closes her eyes and gulps through the nausea. “We’re going to need at least three bedrooms,” she informs him.

Leonard clears his throat from where he stands in the doorway. Lilith turns to look at him over her shoulder. “Hi,” she says.

“You started without me,” Leonard says as he shrugs his jacket off.

“I was house hunting,” Lilith holds up her hands in mock surrender, “and then I was doing my vision thing. I started nothing.”

Ray moves his hands from her shoulders to her hips and tilts his head sideways so he can turn the full force of his grin on Leonard. “You should move in with us,” he suggests nonchalantly.

“No pressure,” Lilith squawks. The look she gives Ray says  _The hell? You can’t just ask our criminal boyfriend to move in with us like that. Have you no subtlety?_

Leonard kneels on the bed and situates himself behind her, figuring out where his legs go before he leans into them, one hand on Ray’s thigh and the other splayed over Lilith’s stomach. “I’ll think about it,” he says, his breath warm against the back of her neck. What he means is, _yes_.

“Okay,” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ as his fingertips move over the stretch marks on her belly and under the waistband of her panties, “you do that.”


	4. The Road Outside My House Is Paved with Good Intentions

**I hope**  
**that if alternate universes exist,**  
**it will still be you**  
**and me**  
**in the end. I hope that**  
**there will always be an us**  
**in every world,**  
**in every story.**

Tina Tran, “Let Us Always Find Each Other”

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 3**  
The Road Outside My House Is Paved with Good Intentions

* * *

**April 2016**

* * *

Joe has been alternating between quietly judging her and avoiding her at all costs since Lilith started seeing Leonard. According to Iris, the silent treatment is how Joe expresses his disappointment in people. Between the vision thing and chronic pain and circumnavigating functional polyamory, she hasn’t had time to address the issue—and she’s not sure she wants to. Her personal life is none of his business. He can keep giving her the silent treatment until the cows come home. It won’t change how she feels. Still, she invites him to her housewarming party and he shows up with a bottle of Jack Daniels honey liqueur, which he knows is her favorite.

“What do you see in him?” Joe tilts his head toward Leonard, who sits at one end of the long mahogany table with Lisa, Cisco, and Shawna to his left. Stein is at the other end of the table with Clarissa and a pizza box, bemoaning his recent love for Beyoncé and blaming Ronnie for it. Ray, Iris, Eddie, Felicity, Barry, Caitlin, Ronnie, Patty, Fiona, Kathy, and Sandra occupy the giant couch salvaged from her apartment and reupholstered in floral print.

“Well,” Lilith deadpans from her perch on a small wooden stool next to the liquor cabinet, “for a guy who unironically calls himself Captain Cold, he’s actually pretty hot.”

“Ew.” Joe shakes his head. “For real, Lil. Why are you with him? I just don’t get it.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the _y_ sound to release some of the tension floating around, “you know I spent a year and a half alone with the visions. What you don’t know is that I saw every death, every missing person, every crime perpetrated by metahumans in this city. Which means I could’ve stopped those crimes and saved those people, but I didn’t. I put myself first and I regret nothing. Ray doesn’t get that, but Len totally does.” With that, she drains the two fingers of honey whiskey in her glass to shut herself up.

Joe raises his eyebrows at that. “I thought you and Ray were happy together,” he says.

Lilith side-eyes him. “I told Eddie once that it’s possible to love more than one person,” she says, “but that how you choose to love someone is what matters. I thought a relationship with Len wasn’t sustainable, so I chose Ray over him. Len was the one who decided he wanted to be part of what Ray and I had instead of trying to win me back. I wasn’t going to say no.”

Joe’s own words to Eddie come back to haunt him: _Snart’s been deterred before, but once he goes after something, he doesn’t stop until he gets it. Ever_. Apparently, that doesn’t just apply to things like the Kahndaq dynasty diamond. “How exactly is a relationship with three people in it sustainable?” he wants to know.

Lilith shrugs. “I have no idea,” she unfolds herself from the stool and hobbles into the kitchen. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Please don’t.” Joe retorts in his best authority figure voice, but she can hear the underlying smile in his tone as she walks away.

Lilith puts her glass in the dishwasher and leans against the kitchen counter. _I hereby declare tonight a win_ , she thinks.

Iris approaches, her bare feet quiet as she crosses the checkerboard tiles. “I saw you talking to my dad,” she says, “are you okay?”

Lilith nods. “I’m fine,” she yawns through the word _fine_ , stretching out the vowel sound and swallowing noisily in the aftermath. “Joe’s never going to approve of Len, but I’m okay with that.”

“I’m not sure I approve of him either,” Iris informs her. “I mean, it’s not just that he’s a criminal or that he held you hostage before we met. I saw what you were like after he left. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I’m not saying he’ll never leave again,” Lilith sighs, “but next time he goes to pull a job I’ll know he’s coming back. Which is good enough for me.”

Iris shrugs. “If it’s good enough for you,” she links arms with Lilith and matches her pace as they walk back into the great room, “then it’s good enough for me too.”

Beyond the judgmental glares from Joe and the totally understandable misgivings everyone has from their previous interactions with Leonard, her friends have taken the whole criminal boyfriend thing shockingly well. She sits on the couch between Iris and Ray. She tries not to wonder when the other shoe will drop.

* * *

Cisco can manipulate seismic energy, but he can’t always control it. Sometimes he causes small scale earthquakes when he’s emotionally compromised. Lisa prides herself on provoking his quakes not by hurting Cisco, but by getting him so excited that he literally shakes with good vibrations.

Lilith is in the elevator rising from her office on Level 300 to the cortex on Level 600 when the tremor hits.  _The hell?_  she closes her eyes and thinks,  _get me out of here!_

When she opens her eyes, she isn’t in the elevator anymore. Apparently she’s in a warehouse surrounded by a bunch of cars covered in white canvas tarps.

 _The hell?_  she thinks just as the door ices over and shatters on impact when a white and yellow car drives through it. Lilith takes cover behind one of the cars and peeks around the bumper, her knee screaming at the sudden movement.

Leonard emerges from the passenger seat and smirks at Mick as he closes the door. “Told you it would break,” he says smugly.

“And the shrink says I’m crazy,” Mick replies as he stalks toward the closest car. “What is this place?”

“Customs warehouse,” Leonard informs him as Mick uncovers a bright red sports car. “Imported cars from Europe. All worth a fortune.”

“Question,” Mick wants to know, “how do you suggest we drive all these cars out of here?”

“We’re not,” Leonard says flatly. “We’re not stealing anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Mick says, his tone one part curiosity and one part threat.

“Our entrance set off the silent alarm,” Leonard explains, “the cops’ll be arriving in two minutes and fourteen seconds.”

“Bring ’em,” Mick growls and extracts the case that holds his heat ray from the backseat.

“That’s not for the cops,” Leonard says. “As we discussed,” he holds his cold gun at the ready, “he’ll be here.”

“Actually,” Lilith winces and hobbles out from behind the Lamborghini moonlighting as her makeshift shield, “the Flash isn’t coming, and the cops’ll be here sooner than you think.”

Leonard looks at her like he’s never seen her before. None of the feelings are there in his eyes. It’s like looking at a stranger. “Who are you?” he wants to know. Lilith keeps time from sticking to Mick before he notices her. Leonard looks from her to his partner and back again. “What did you do to him?” he asks in a harsh, low voice.

“I’m keeping time from sticking to him,” Lilith explains. “I also got here at least a minute before you did,” here she pauses so he can hear the sirens shrieking in the distance, “which accelerates your timetable.”

“Give me one reason not to shoot you,” Leonard snarls. Maybe she should’ve kept time from sticking to both of them after they got in the car and sneaked into the backseat instead.

“I’ll take your guns away and leave you for the cops.” Lilith says, her tone deadly serious. “Or you can let me hitch a ride in your getaway car. It’s your choice, Len.”

Leonard makes a disgruntled noise as Lilith hobbles over to the getaway car and keeps his gun aimed at her as she folds herself into the backseat. Mick snaps back to reality and notices the sirens.

“We’re leaving,” Leonard informs him.

“This better make sense real fast, buddy.” Mick puts his heat ray in the backseat next to Lilith.

“It will,” Leonard says. “Let’s go.”

“You promised me I’d get to do my thing,” Mick grumbles.

“I always keep my promises,” he looks at Lilith in the rearview mirror and says, “seatbelt.”

Mick buckles himself in and notices the redhead in the mirror. “What the hell,” he says.

“Hi.” Lilith waves, her fingers curling into the hollow of her palm. “What year is it?”

“Today is January twentieth,” Leonard says as Mick backs the car through the hole in the door, “the year is 2015.”

“Oh my god,” Lilith buries her face in her hands and groans into her cupped palms.

“Who the hell is she?” Mick wants to know.

“I don’t know,” Leonard retorts, “she didn’t say.”

Lilith extracts her phone from her pocket and makes a triumphant noise because the internet works. Then she googles  _Lilith Clay_  and nothing comes up. So she tries  _Loren Jupiter_  and almost drops the phone in shock. _The hell_ , she thinks as she looks at the photograph captioned  _billionaire philanthropist Loren Jupiter attends charity gala with wife Victoria and daughter Lilith_ , the announcement proclaiming  _Lilith Lorena Jupiter wed Donald George Hall on 12 December 2012_ , and the byline that reads  _pregnant heiress widowed after S. T. A. R. Labs particle accelerator explosion_. It’s the alternate version of herself from her visions, the girl whose life she calls  _Growing up Jupiter_  in her head.

“Toto,” she whispers, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Kansas is, ironically, across the river that separates Central City from Keystone City; but in this context Kansas is, metaphorically, Missouri in an alternate universe.

Leonard snatches the phone and looks at the screen. “Is this you?” he wants to know.

Lilith doesn’t know how to answer that question. Lilith Hall is someone she might’ve been: a legitimate heiress, a widowed single mother, a psychokinetic metahuman. Lilith Hall is skinner than her—a size 12 instead of a size 18—her hair is curlier, her eyes are greener, she wears glasses, and she’s able-bodied. “No,” Lilith sparks the taser for emphasis and presses the business end of her cane against the nape of his neck until he gives her phone back.  _In this universe_ , she thinks, _my biological father left his fiancée for my biological mother. I wasn’t adopted, so I was never injured, and Len didn’t kidnap me. Which is why he doesn’t know who I am. Also, my ex-girlfriend is a boy named Donald and apparently I married him_. “When the particle accelerator exploded, I started living in alternate timelines. I see the future,” Lilith sighs and puts her phone back in her pocket, “except the future is malleable as hell. Which means one choice can change everything. Which is what happened here. I’m not her,” she yawns through the word _not_ , “but she’s me.”

“You’re Lilith Hall,” Leonard says. “Your parents are Loren and Victoria Jupiter, one of the richest couples in Central City.”

“No,” Lilith retorts. “I’m Lilith Clay—biological daughter of Loren Jupiter and Vicki Vale, adopted daughter of William Clay and Addie Vale—but I guess I was never adopted in this timeline. Which changes everything.”

“You called me Len,” he looks at her in the rearview mirror. “Do we know each other in your timeline?”

“Yup.” Lilith avoids his gaze and flushes in embarrassment when her voice pitches higher. “You could say that.”

“How, exactly?” he wants to know.

“In the biblical sense.” Lilith fizzles out on the sibilant and steadfastly refuses to look at him. “It’s a long story.”

Mick parks in front of another warehouse and retrieves his heat ray from the backseat. Leonard stands on the pavement with his cold gun aimed at her. Lilith sighs as she hobbles into the warehouse at gunpoint.

“Tell me the story,” Leonard orders in his smoothest voice as she sits in a conveniently located folding chair.

Lilith rolls her eyes at him. “You kidnapped me on my eighteenth birthday,” she begins, “and ransomed me to my biological father for fifty million dollars. I was using a wheelchair, so you thought it’d be easy money. I kicked you in the face and took a quarter of your payout. When you let me go, I told you I never wanted to see you again,” she yawns through the word  _never_ , “and I didn’t until I walked into the  _Motorcar_  five years later. You were sitting at a table by the window listening to police scanners, planning to steal the Kahndaq dynasty diamond. I may or may not have antagonized you,” Lilith shrugs with one shoulder. “I figured I’d see it coming if you ever tried to hurt me again. I guess that’s where it started, even though I didn’t see you again until nine months after that.”

Leonard folds his arms. “Then what?”

“Then you showed up at my adoptive mother’s ballet studio after a sequence of events that won’t occur in this timeline,” Lilith continues. “You asked me out and I said yes. We were together for three months. Then you told me what we had wasn’t serious and went to steal a painting from the Delaware Art Museum. I had a boyfriend when you came back.”

“So we’re not together anymore,” Leonard concludes.

“Actually we are.” Lilith forces herself to look at him. “All three of us.”

“So you need two men to keep you happy.” Leonard somehow manages to make that sentence one part innuendo and one part judgmental.

“No,” Lilith snorts, “but I am in love with two people. I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to have them both.”

Leonard is fascinated by the possibility of her. Not just the relationship they supposedly have where she comes from, but how her powers could change the game. Theoretically, she could stop the Flash. Which means she could up his game to a whole new level he never even considered before. “What will you do,” he asks with a predatory tilt to his head, “if you can’t go back to your timeline?”

Lilith narrows her eyes suspiciously at his motivations for asking that question. She doesn’t have to be precognitive to know where he’s going. “I don’t think that’s a possibility,” she informs him, “because two versions of one person aren’t supposed to occupy the same reality. Which doesn’t mean I can stay if Lilith Hall dies,” she clarifies so he won’t take that as an invitation to hurt her counterpart, “she belongs here.” Lilith closes her eyes and says, “I belong elsewhere.”

“God, you’re beautiful.” Mick flicks his lighter on and gazes at the naked flame.

“Mick,” Leonard turns to glare at his partner in warning. When he turns back around, the folding chair is empty.

When she opens her eyes, she’s back in the elevator. Cisco drops the infernal beeping device he was holding and throws his arms around her shoulders. “Thank god you’re back!” he yells.

Lilith winces because his voice is extremely loud and incredibly close to her ear. “I’m glad to be home,” she says, “but dial it back, Vibe.”

“Sorry,” Cisco lets her go and backs up with a sheepish grin, “you opened a wormhole in the elevator and it looked like you ceased to exist so everybody was freaking out. Snart almost shot me when I realized my quake triggered your interdimensional vanishing act. Ray is in the particle accelerator right now with Barry and Ronnie and Stein trying to reopen the wormhole you made.” With that, he presses a button on his headset. “Lil’s back,” he informs everyone who’s listening, “y’all can stop trying to tear the fabric of the universe now.”

When the sliding doors open, the hallway is festooned with people. Stein is giving her a look that means he wants to run tests and take samples and do whatever it is scientists do with genetic material from metahumans who’ve achieved interdimensional travel. Barry is busy stamping out his smoking shoes, but when that’s done he looks at her with an expression of such relief on his face that she smiles at him without showing her teeth.

“I’m fine,” she informs everybody.

“Lil,” Ray wheezes as he closes the distance between them because he’s out of breath from running up the ramps from the basement to Level 300, “you ceased to exist.”

“No.” Lilith shakes her head slowly as Ray sweeps her off her feet, cane and all; he buries his face in the space between her neck and shoulder and breathes like he’s trying to inhale her and keep her safe beneath his ribcage. “I visited another timeline,” she clarifies, “or an alternate universe. Whichever. I might not have existed here, but I continued existing elsewhere.”

“For real?” Barry says.

“I achieved time travel last year,” Lilith shrugs, “this was totally a natural progression.”

“Where did you go?” Ronnie asks.

“When did you go?” Felicity wants to know.

“I went to January twentieth of last year in the alternate universe where I was never adopted,” Lilith informs them as she hobbles back to her designated office space and flops into her swivel chair. Ray, Barry, Felicity, Cisco, Caitlin, Ronnie and Stein follow her into the room. Leonard and Lisa are conspicuously absent, which means her criminal boyfriend probably went to work out his aggression by doing something illegal. She sees a storm brewing inside the downtown branch of CCNB. “Oh my god,” she groans. “Barry, I need you to run me to Central City National Bank. Cisco, do we have any of those tricked out shields you made to combat the cold gun up in here?”

“Which one?” Barry wants to know before he speeds away to put on his suit.

At the same time, Cisco says: “Yup, I think so.”

“We might need something to stop the Weather Wizard.” Lilith swallows her nausea and clarifies: “I saw a storm.”

Barry returns suited up, shield in hand. “We need the wand,” Caitlin informs him. Barry is back in a flash with the wizard’s wand.

“Is that a sonic screwdriver?” Ray arches one eyebrow.

“I know, right?” Cisco grins. “I totally designed it in homage to  _Doctor Who_.”

“It’s the downtown branch,” Lilith answers his question belatedly as she hooks her cane over the crook of her elbow and loops the shield over her forearm. Barry tucks the wand through his belt loop behind his back and speeds her away to the bank.

Leonard and Lisa are in the back with the vault, the former stealing blocks of cash while the latter plays lookout. Mick is burning everything within range of his heat ray. Mark is summoning storm clouds and striking lightning indoors. Lilith hobbles through the chaos and into the back without bothering to stop time because Barry takes out Mick first and then negates Mark’s power with the wand before she crosses the room.

“Hey, Lil.” Lisa smiles at her and lowers her gold gun. “So you’re back,” she says, “I wasn’t worried.”

“Of course not.” Lilith rolls her eyes and drops the shield. “How long was I gone?”

Lisa shrugs. “Like three days,” she says.

Lilith’s eyes go wide.  _The hell?_  she thinks.

At the same time, Leonard says: “Seventy-nine hours, twenty-three minutes and,” he looks at his watch, “sixteen seconds.”

“I figured it’d take you longer than a few hours to pull a bank job,” Lilith deadpans. “Tell me you didn’t kill anyone in your fit of impotent rage disguised as a robbery.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Leonard says flatly. “I kept my word.”

“Okay.” Lilith sighs and shuts her eyes as she forces the tension to flee her shoulders. Leonard uses his control like a weapon and he escalates when he feels threatened. Losing her must’ve made him feel powerless. Loving him doesn’t change what he is.

Leonard presses her against the wall of the bank vault with his body, one hand twisted into her hair and the other holding the hand that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane above her head. “I can live without you,” he says, “I just don’t want to.”

When he kisses her it’s all bite, his mouth hard against hers and his teeth bruising her bottom lip. Lilith slides her tongue over his and tastes the beer he’s been drinking. When his hand moves up her thigh and under her skirt, she drops her cane and stops him. “No,” she exhales a soft  _woo_ as she tries to catch her breath. “I’m not having sex with you in a bank vault. I don’t care how worried you were.”

“I disabled the security cameras,” Leonard informs her in the smooth voice he only uses when he wants something.

“Not happening,” Lilith says firmly.

Leonard sighs and kneels to pick up her cane. “Let’s go,” he says.

“That was quick.” Lisa smirks at them as they emerge from the vault.

“Shut up,” she exhales a noise that is too happy for the huff it was meant to be. Leonard is still holding her hand. Lilith has a hunch he won’t let go anytime soon.

Leonard tilts his head and looks at Barry. “I don’t suppose you’d get us out of here?”

Barry scoffs. “I’m not rescuing your rogues’ gallery,” he says.

Lilith rolls her eyes and wonders if she can stop time for everybody outside the bank long enough for them to get away. The sirens fall silent, so apparently she can. “Let’s go,” she says.

“Lil,” Barry protests.

Lilith sighs loudly. “The bank is insured,” she says, “and I’d like to avoid a superweapon shootout with a side of thunderbolts, so in the immortal words of Buffy Summers: hop on the train or get off the tracks.”

“I’m taking Mardon back to the pipeline,” Barry says.

“How about no,” Lilith says firmly. “His girlfriend is pregnant. She needs him.”

“How do you know about Julie?” Mark wants to know as clouds form in the corners of the ceiling. Leonard points his cold gun at him. When the cirrus unravels, he bends his firing arm so the gun rests on his shoulder.

“I’m precognitive,” Lilith deadpans, “it’s a boy with powers like yours, by the way. I have a friend who can hook you up with a temporary vaccine after he’s born so you don’t have to deal with storms brewing every time he cries.”

“Why, so I’ll owe you one?” Mark stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans; he doesn’t want to be indebted to Captain Cold or his girlfriend.

“No,” Lilith says, “so maybe he’ll survive to see his first birthday and he won’t accidentally kill his mother with a lightning strike when he throws a tantrum. I think he deserves a better future than that,” she says, “but it’s your job to make it happen. When you’re a parent,” she yawns through the word  _you’re_  and hooks her cane over the crook of her elbow to cover her mouth with her hand, “you have to put your kid first. No matter what.”

“I can do that.” Mark gives her a lopsided smile and wonders, “What’s a girl like you doing with an asshole like him?”

“Well,” Leonard smirks and holsters his cold gun.

“Oh my god,” Lilith uses the handle of her cane to yank his fur-trimmed hood over his face. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

Leonard pulls his hood down and grins at her. “We both know that’s not true,” he says.

“Gross,” Lisa says, but she’s grinning too as she looks down at her phone. “Mick’s waiting outside in the getaway car,” she informs them.

Lilith yawns and calls, “shotgun.”

Leonard stops holding her hand so he can adjust the duffle bags of cash slung over his shoulder, but he matches her pace as she hobbles to the exit. When they’re outside, he notices the eerie cityscape with the cops and passersby stuck in what is, for all intents and purposes, suspended animation. “How much of the city did you freeze?” he wants to know.

“I may or may not have stopped time for all of Central City,” Lilith says, “and possibly Keystone City. I went big,” she lets him open the passenger side door for her and says, “let’s go home.”

* * *

Leonard notices that Ray punches with his thumb inside his fist one day—the only reason he hasn’t broken it yet is that he wears body armor made of dwarf star alloy whenever he punches crime in the face—and decides to teach him to fight.

Gideon helped design the training center Ray built on Level 500 of S. T. A. R. Labs, complete with a salmon ladder in one corner and targets reinforced to take hits from pretty much anything: Ray’s plasma cannons, Cisco’s sonic booms, Firestorm’s pyrokinesis, Caitlin’s cryokinesis, and Oliver’s trick arrows, just in case he ever makes an appearance in Central City again.

Ray texts Lilith, **the first rule of fight club is: you do not talk about fight club**. Lilith doesn’t text back. Instead she stands abruptly and hobbles across the cortex to the elevator.

“Where’s the fire?” Ronnie jokes.

Lilith rolls her eyes and thinks _wherever Mick is, probably_. Aloud, she says: “Len is teaching Ray to fight. I’m going to watch.”

Felicity scoots her chair back from her desk. “Me too,” she elongates the _e_ sound awkwardly, her heels clicking against the floor as she joins Lilith at the sliding doors.

“This is going to be so dope!” Cisco’s grin fades into a worried expression. “Hold up, is Snart going to fight Ray for real?”

“No,” Lilith snorts. “Len wants to keep Ray alive.”

“Snart kept me alive,” Cisco points out, “but he gave my brother frostbite.”

“I thought you hated your brother,” Ronnie says.

“Dante isn’t my favorite person,” Cisco shrugs, “but that doesn’t mean I want his fingers to fall off.”

Caitlin shakes her head so her curls oscillate around her shoulders and back, trying to keep the frost creeping over her knuckles from becoming ice crystals. Ronnie takes her hand, his unconditional trust spreading over her like sunlight as the elevator dings and the doors slide open.

Leonard has pinned Ray to the floor in the space between when he texted Lilith and when she emerged from the elevator. Lilith curses inwardly as she flushes because her boyfriends are both shirtless and tangled together. Ray is breathing hard, like whatever Leonard did to pin him down stole the air from his lungs. Leonard hasn’t even broken a sweat, the asshole.

“Now kiss,” Lilith somehow manages to deadpan with a smile as she hobbles to the edge of the blue training mats. Leonard smirks at her over his shoulder before Ray pulls him down and slants their mouths together.

“Wow.” Felicity watches her ex kiss another man with eyes wide and lips open.

Lilith can’t stop smiling. It’s becoming a problem. “I know, right?”

* * *

**May 2016**

* * *

Rip Hunter travels back in time from the twenty-second century and recruits a team of heroes and villains who have become legends. At the same time, his girlfriend Bonnie Baxter seeks out Lilith and establishes a causality loop.

“Have we met?” Lilith wants to know.

“Not yet,” Bonnie says, “but we have and we are, we did and we will,” she huffs at the inaccuracy of past and present tense when applied to causality loops and clarifies, “six years ago for me, in four years for you.”

“Modern syntax hasn’t adapted to time travel,” Lilith deadpans. It takes her a second to recognize Bonnie from the vision of her brother Corky and his boyfriend Jeff going back in time to 48,000 BCE and dying at the hands of Vandar Adg, the caveman who becomes Vandal Savage. She sees another version of herself kidnapped by Vandal Savage and forced to recruit villains for a group called Tartarus.  _I get kidnapped no matter what continuity I’m in_ , she thinks.  _The hell, universe?_

“Exactly,” Bonnie laughs. “Which you also said, or will say, when we meet again for the first time. Last year—in an alternate timeline—we facilitated the defeat of an immortal psychopath who planned to defeat his nemesis by destroying the multiverse. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

“Consider my mind blown,” Lilith yawns through the word  _mind_.

Bonnie smiles like she knows something Lilith doesn’t. Which she probably does.

“How was your day?” Ray asks later that night.

“Apparently I saved the multiverse,” Lilith flails her arms in an abysmal imitation of the white rappers from  _Teen Witch_ , “top that.”

“Lilith Clay,” Ray says, “you are the most important woman in the whole of creation.”

“How about no,” Lilith snorts. “I’m not Donna Noble, you’re not Rose Tyler, and I regret watching  _Doctor Who_ with you.”

“Well, you do see what is, what was, what could be, and what must not,” Ray points out.

Lilith groans and buries her face in her hands. “I’m not a Time Lady, either.”

Ray grins at her. “If you think we’re not going to Central City Comic Con as Donna and the Tenth Doctor, you’ve got another think coming.”

Lilith removes her hands from her face and raises her eyebrows like a challenge. “I’ll do it if you can get Len to dress up as Captain Jack Harkness,” she says.

“I know you’re only saying that because you think he won’t,” Ray folds his arms, “but he already has the duster. I can probably talk him into it.”

“Okay,” Lilith rolls her eyes, “you do that.”

* * *

Ray cooks breakfast naked in the morning when he isn’t sleep-deprived. Leonard likes to watch. Lilith sleeps through breakfast most of the time, but someone eventually wakes her up with waffles.

“I’m thinking of proposing to Lil,” Ray informs Leonard as they sit at the breakfast bar. Ray is wearing an apron and nothing else. Leonard is pretty much fully dressed—shirt, pants, socks—because he gets cold easily despite the Missouri humidity.

Leonard doesn’t know how to respond to that. “Why?” he wants to know.

Ray grins his lopsided grin. “I want her to know that this,” he gestures from himself to Leonard with one hand and in the general direction of their bedroom where Lilith is probably snoring into her pillow with the other, “is permanent. I’m not trying to supersede you in our relationship. If she says yes, we’ll talk about whether or not you want to act like we’re all married to each other even though she can’t legally marry two people.”

“What if she says no?” Leonard folds his arms. “Lilith has rejected a marriage proposal before.”

“When she was twenty-one,” Ray nods, “because she wasn’t ready.”

“How do you know she’s ready now?” Leonard doesn’t know if he’s ready, because it would be his marriage too even if it’s not his wedding.

Ray shrugs and reaches for his hand. “I don’t,” he confides as he squeezes his fingers, “which is why I’m asking you how you feel about this. I do know she’ll say no if you’re not okay with it.”

Leonard exhales and unclenches his shoulders. “Have you bought a ring?” he asks.

“Not yet,” Ray holds up one finger as if to say  _wait for it_. When he proposed to Anna, he used the engagement ring his father had given to his mother. After she died, he buried it with her because he had no intention of being with anybody else. Felicity is the one who made him realize he wanted to fall in love again. Lilith and Leonard are the ones he wants to be with until his dying day. “Actually, I was wondering if you’d help me pick one out.”

Leonard can’t believe he’s considering this, but he wants it badly. The only thing he wants more is to kill his father, which says a lot. “I never thought marriage was an option for me,” mostly because he thought romantic entanglement and the job were mutually exclusive until he fell for the girl in question, “but I didn’t see any of this coming.”

When he kisses him on the mouth Ray tastes like breakfast food, a ham and gruyere omelette and skim milk. Leonard kisses back slowly until Ray pulls away after his stool wobbles precariously beneath him.

“What was that for?” Leonard asks.

“I love you,” Ray smiles hesitantly at him and clarifies, “I’m emotionally invested. I’m not just proposing to her. I’m asking you to marry us, too.”

Leonard can’t handle how kind Ray is sometimes, because his reaction is somewhere in between  _protect him at all costs_ and  _trusting guys like me is going to destroy you_. “I love you too,” he says, “and I’ll help you with the ring.”

As if on cue, the light on the waffle maker changes from red to green. Ray gets up to bring Lilith her waffles. Sometimes it still feels surreal that this is his life, but he’s not going to question it. Instead he leans against the frame of their bedroom door and watches Lilith flail gracelessly awake, her hair a mess and her eyes heavy with sleep. When she looks at him, he wonders if she’ll see the proposal coming now that they’ve made it a possibility by agreeing to pick out a ring.

Leonard smirks at her because he doesn’t have to be precognitive to know what her answer will be.

* * *

**June 2016**

* * *

Iris and Eddie are married on a Friday with no metahuman attacks and no unnatural disasters to avert. Unfortunately, the relative peace and quiet doesn’t stop Iris’s meltdown.

It begins with Lola passive-aggressively insisting that her sisters-in-law—Lola’s wife Edie and Rudy’s wife Mary—should’ve been her other bridesmaids instead of Caitlin and Felicity. It continues when Wally runs down the aisle faster than the speed of sound until Barry stops him and informs Iris that her nephew is a speedster. It carries on when Joe arrives and Iris starts wondering if her father still wants her to marry Barry instead of Eddie. It ends when Lilith eventually orders everyone else to leave the area they’ve designated as the bridal dressing room and flops into a conveniently located chair facing her best friend.

“Hey,” Lilith puts one hand on Iris’s cheek and carefully wipes the tears away with a tissue she extracts from the packet she keeps in her purse, “at least you didn’t pick out ugly bridesmaids’ dresses.”

Iris exhales a soggy laugh and sniffles in the aftermath. “I don’t have cold feet,” she says, “I just don’t know if my dad wants this to happen and my sister is being a bitch about the wedding party and my nephew is a speedster, apparently.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the vowel sounds until her  _oh_  becomes an  _ooh_  and the  _y_  stretches between them. “Firstly, Joe gave his blessing to Eddie at the rehearsal dinner, which I’m surprised nobody told you. Secondly, your sister is a bitch no matter what, which is why you’re not close, and I think you’d rather have me and Cait and Fee in your corner than Lola and Edie and Mary, so screw her. Thirdly, Barry can handle another speedster, especially when it’s your eight-year-old nephew and not a time-traveling supervillain.”

“Oh my god,” Iris groans. “Our  _lives_.”

“I know, right?” Lilith snorts. “At least Eddie isn’t dead and we’re not dealing with the fallout of a paradox.”

“Ours is the superior reality,” Iris sniffles.

“Hell yeah.” Lilith nods and extracts a sheet of gold star stickers from her purse. Then she presses one against Iris’s cheek under her eye. “That’s for not ruining your makeup,” she says, “and for becoming a Sadie.”

“Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” Iris sings off-key, “bow when I go by.”

“Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” Lilith laughs through the lyrics and bows from a sitting position with a flourish, “still in bed at noon.”

Iris leans forward, engulfs Lilith in a hug, and kisses her on the cheek before she pulls away. “Thank you,” she says.

“Of course.” Lilith gently boops Iris on the nose. “What are friends for?”

Iris shakes her doubts off and sighs contentedly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she reaches for Lilith’s hand and squeezes her fingers, “but I’m glad Barry got struck by lightning. If he was never in a coma, then we never would’ve met. I love him so much, but I love you too. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Lilith doesn’t mention the realities where they don’t know each other, where she lives in Los Angeles or she straight up doesn’t exist.  _Ours is the superior reality_ , she thinks. “I’m glad to be here,” she says as she uses her cane to get back on her feet without letting go of Iris’s hand, “and I love you too.”

Iris stands up and holds still while Lilith arranges her veil over her face. “Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” she grins to herself beneath the lace of her veil, “that’s me.”

Cisco starts gross sobbing during the vows. Lisa holds his hand and squeezes hard enough that his bones grind together when he tries to cry on her shoulder. Felicity catches the bouquet and Barry almost gets down on one knee right then and there, but he dials it back when Iris gives him the stinkeye. Lilith injects herself with nanotechnology Ray designed to temporarily re-stabilize her knee for a few hours and steals Iris from Eddie after their first dance. Lilith still can’t go on tiptoe because of the multiple ruptures to her Achilles tendon, but she manages not to step on Iris’s toes so she calls it a win.

Ray asks Felicity to dance so Barry can dance with his best friend. Eddie is dancing with his grandmother. Leonard is wearing a tuxedo, but his shirt and tie are black and dark blue, just in case anybody forgets he’s a villain. Which nobody has.

“Hi.” Lilith puts her hands on his shoulders.

“Hi there,” Leonard smooths his hands over her hips and pulls her against him, “may I have this dance?”

“Yup.” Lilith snorts because she’s already in his arms. As if she’s going to say no. “You may.”

It becomes obvious that Leonard has no idea how to dance beyond swaying from one foot to the other like a high school slow dance with the occasional half spin thrown in for flair. Which is a shame, because he’s built like a danseur noble. It’s also strangely endearing that she can do something he can’t.

“Here,” she moves one of his hands from her hip to her waist and holds the other without interlacing their fingers, folding her thumb over the back of his hand instead. Lilith walks him through a waltz, grateful for the ballroom dance classes she took with her dad after she didn’t need to use her wheelchair anymore. “You can follow lead,” she says. “You probably shouldn’t dance without me.”

“Wouldn’t want to.” Leonard smirks and dips her back.

Lilith swallows a yelp at the sudden movement and grins when she notices one of his hands is pressing their bodies closer together while the other is wrapped loosely around her neck, his thumb stroking her jaw. “You’re being romantic,” she says as he slowly pulls her upright, her voice one part teasing and one part caution. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says, and means it. Leonard flawlessly executed his plan to steal the Hortensia diamond when it was on loan at the Central City Museum last week and it gave him an idea. “I think we should honeymoon in Paris.”

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to see where he’s going; she found the engagement ring in Ray’s sock drawer a few days ago. “You want to rob the Louvre,” she deduces.

“You know me so well,” he smiles.

Lilith sighs. “Please don’t steal the Mona Lisa,” she says.

“Why?” Leonard tilts his head. “Because I shouldn’t deprive the world of such a masterpiece?”

“No,” Lilith huffs. “Because it’s approximately the size of a postage stamp. Very underwhelming in person.”

“You’d make a good thief,” Leonard says. To him, her lack of interest in a life of crime is a travesty. With her powers and her perspicacity, she’d beat him at his own game easily. It’s a pity she won’t even try.

“I’m a great thief,” Lilith deadpans. “I stole your heart.”

It’s corny as hell, but she’s not wrong. Leonard hums in derisory agreement and bends down to kiss her soft and slow, like they have all the time in the world.

When the song ends, Ray puts one hand on each of their shoulders and asks, “may I cut in?”

Lilith nods. “You can dance with each other,” she clarifies, “I don’t have the spoons to stand up anymore. You lead, Ray.” With that, she hobbles over to the closest empty table and flops into a chintz chair, place cards be damned.

One thing she’s learned since the particle accelerator exploded is that a single choice can change everything, like in chaos theory: a butterfly flaps its wings and creates a hurricane elsewhere. Against all odds, everyone she loves is alive and happy. Lilith is incapable of taking her world for granted because she knows exactly how much worse things could be.

She watches Eddie and Iris swaying together. She sees their son, a speedster with dark skin and blonde cornrows, and their daughter surrounded by cobalt blue flames. She watches Felicity and Barry laugh as they lean into each other, their shoulders shaking. She sees their daughter, a bespectacled brunette with electricity sparking in her palms and static in her hair. She watches Caitlin smile with her eyes closed and her head tucked under Ronnie’s chin. She sees their daughter, a grey-eyed cryokinetic redhead. She watches Cisco showing Lisa how to salsa with exaggerated hip motions as Lisa towers over him in her stilettoes. She sees twins—a boy and a girl—and Lisa and Leonard threatening to shoot Cisco simultaneously for knocking her up. She sees Iris’s nephew become the Flash. She sees Iris’s niece overseeing mission control from the cortex. She sees her future with Leonard and Ray, their psychokinetic son and their chronokinetic daughter.

 _Ours is the superior reality_ , Lilith thinks.

* * *

**July 2016**

* * *

After he buys S. T. A. R. Labs, Ray hires Jean Loring—a lawyer from Starling City and Anna’s aunt—to overturn Henry Allen’s murder conviction and throws money around until it happens. Henry is released from prison thirteen months later. Somehow the evidence the C. C. P. D. had against him goes missing before his retrial. Barry assumes Leonard has everything to do with that, but for once he’s not questioning it. After all, his father is innocent, so getting him out of jail is the right thing to do.

Henry ends up staying in the spare bedroom at Joe’s house. When he visits S. T. A. R. Labs with Joe, Lilith takes one look at them and whispers conspiratorially to Barry: “Your two dads are gonna bang like a screen door in a hurricane.”

Barry gapes, dials it back, thinks it over, and shrugs. If being the Flash has taught him anything, it’s how to accept the impossible. “I don’t care what they do as long as it makes them happy,” he informs her before he goes to show Henry the time machine in the basement. When he and his two dads return from the bowels of S. T. A. R. Labs, there is a gold star stuck between the zig and zag of the lightning bolt on the front of his suit.

After that, Barry starts giving Henry and Joe significant looks whenever he comes home to find then sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching baseball. It gets worse when Henry confides that Joe visited him in prison once a week for years and the frequency of those visits doubled—or sometimes tripled—when Joe learned that Henry wasn’t guilty. Iris calls them an old married couple at family dinner one night and Joe has an epiphany that she’s not wrong.

Henry goes to the library once a week and comes home with an armful of books. Joe calls Lilith from the other room as he gets ready to leave. “Are you busy right now?” he wants to know.

“No.” Lilith yawns so the vowel sound unspools from her throat. Ray is at work and Leonard is probably doing something illegal. She doesn’t conflate busyness with reading the new  _Anita Blake_  novel and eating fresh strawberries in bed.

“Can we talk at the house?” Joe asks.

“Of course.” Lilith winces as she rolls and puts weight on her knee. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“See you soon,” Joe says before he hangs up.

Approximately fifteen minutes later she hobbles into the house. “So,” she flops into the armchair facing away from the kitchen, “what did you want to talk about?”

“Iris and Eddie came over for dinner last night,” Joe begins. “She said Henry and I were like an old married couple. She wasn’t wrong.”

“Okay,” Lilith says cautiously, “why are you talking to me?”

Joe shrugs with forced nonchalance. “You’re bisexual,” he says.

“Yup.” Lilith smooths the wrinkles in her skirt over her knees.

Joe folds his arms and says, “So am I.”

Lilith squashes the urge to offer him a high five. Or a bi five. Whichever.

“I’ve always been interested in both men and women,” Joe continues, “but it wasn’t something people really talked about. Then I met Nadine—Iris’s mother—and she was the one. I didn’t want anyone else after she died.”

“But now you do,” Lilith deduces, “now you want Henry. But that doesn’t explain why you’re talking to me about it.”

“Ray thought he was straight until you both started seeing Snart, right?” Joe wants to know.

“Ray’s demisexual,” Lilith corrects him gently, “he’s not sexually attracted to people he isn’t emotionally invested in. Len is the first dude he’s been with, though. Which is what you meant.” Joe nods. “Which means Henry’s ostensibly straight,” she deduces, “and you’re trying to figure out how to make a move without scaring him off.”

Joe nods again. “Yeah,” he says. “Which is why I’m talking to you. I can’t have this conversation with my boss or either of your boyfriends.”

“So we’re having this conversation by process of elimination,” Lilith says.

“No,” Joe says firmly. “I’m talking to you because I trust you in spite of your questionable romantic choices.”

Lilith smiles and her expression softens. Joe’s trust matters to her. She’s glad he still thinks she’s earned it. “I’m going to be totally honest with you,” she yawns through the word  _honest_ , “I’ve never dated anybody who thought they were straight. Don is aggressively out as a lesbian, Len’s bi too, and Ray is on the ace spectrum.”  _Maybe the dude I lost my virginity to was straight_ , she thinks,  _but he was a danseur noble so I doubt it_. “I have a hunch your thing for Henry is going to work itself out regardless.”

“Wait,” Joe narrows his eyes at her, “what kind of hunch? Like you just think it’ll work itself out, or you know what’s going to happen because you’ve actually seen the future?”

As if on cue, Kate Bush sings  _oh she moves like the diva do / I said “I’d love to dance like you”_  and Lilith extracts her phone from its designated pocket in her purse. “Sorry,” she says to Joe before she answers. “It’s my mom.” Joe nods and opens his hands as if to say,  _do what you gotta do_. Lilith sighs and swipes her finger across the screen to take the call. “Hi mom,” she says, “what’s wrong?” Joe watches as her expression falters, eyes wide and lips open in shock. “Wait, what?” she says. “When? Which hospital?” Lilith nods even though her mother can’t see her. “Okay, I’ll see you there.” With that, she hangs up and tucks her phone haphazardly into her purse.

“Lil, what the hell just happened?” Joe wants to know.

“It’s my dad,” Lilith says. “He had another heart attack. He has coronary artery disease,” she explains as she uses her cane to get back on her feet. “He’s had a myocardial infarction before. He’s having another bypass surgery as we speak. Sorry,” she inhales sharply and hooks the strap of her purse over her arm, “I have to go.”

“Of course,” Joe says, “is there anything I can do?”

“No.” Lilith shakes her head and her hair flops over her face. “For what it’s worth,” she says as she hobbles to the door, “sexuality can be fluid. Henry might not be into dudes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not into you.” After she hurls a fleeting smile over her shoulder, she closes the door behind her and hobbles to her car.

Joe calls Felicity and asks her to figure out which hospital William Clay is at, then texts Iris because she’s at work. Felicity tells Ray what’s happening and he gets ahold of Leonard at his warehouse on the outskirts of the city. William dies on the table during his second coronary bypass surgery. Addie Vale crumples to the floor of the waiting room, her thin shoulders shuddering with her sobs. Lilith stays with her mother while she fills out paperwork to have the body cremated and then flees to the ballet studio.

Iris works through her lunch break so she can leave an hour early and calls Lilith from the parking lot at C. C. P. N. “Where are you?” she wants to know.

“My mom’s studio,” Lilith swallows thickly. “Why?”

“Because you shouldn’t be alone right now, Lil.” Iris can tell she’s crying, but she doesn’t mention it; she remembers how losing a parent feels. Instead she maps a route from C. C. P. N. to the studio on her phone after she hangs up and texts Eddie so he’ll meet her there when he leaves the station.

Eddie calls Barry, who texts everybody else. Which is how they all end up at  _The Red Shoes_  within the hour. Barry runs with Felicity in his arms. When they arrive, her hair is so big it must be full of secrets. Ray, Cisco, Caitlin, and Ronnie carpool from S. T. A. R. Labs. Leonard and Lisa apparently couldn’t convince Mick to stay at the warehouse because he’s there too, heat ray and all. Ray holds the door for Leonard, then follows him down the stairs and into the studio.

Lilith is facing the mirror with her left knee hooked over the barre while she waits for the nanotechnology to work its magic. She’s making a futile attempt to point the toes of her bare left foot. Her Achilles tendon aches in protest as her foot arches and her toes curl. Her first and second toes are disfigured because she broke the phalanges during rehearsal once and then danced on them. Her iPhone is jacked into a set of speakers in the corner, multitasking while it charges and plays  _Danse Macabre_.

“I’m going to dance it out,” Lilith informs them as the song ends and she unhooks her knee, “so either join in or sit down and shut up.”

“Tarantism,” Ray says as she turns to face her friends. Eddie looks confused, so he explains: “the urge to overcome melancholy by dancing.”

“Yup.” Lilith sighs when she notices the heat ray. “Len, did you bring your arsonist to my mom’s studio? Lisa, did you not tell your brother what happened when I met Mick?”

“What happened?” Leonard says flatly. It looks like his partner in crime and his sister both neglected to share that information with him.

“I took her to Saints and Sinners after you left,” Lisa explains. “Mick grabbed me and Lil electrocuted him with her cane,” she grins at Lilith, “it was sick.”

Leonard tilts his head to look at Lilith, who holds up her hands in mock surrender. “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known how much he likes pain,” she shrugs, “or that he has a preference for redheads.”

“Oh yeah,” Mick grins at her and stretches the words out until they sound indecent. Then he tugs down the collar of his shirt to show off the flash burn scars she left above his clavicle. “I think of you whenever I look at these.”

“Mick,” Leonard raises his voice as he reaches for his cold gun.

“No,” Lilith raises her voice and everyone turns to look at her, “my dad is dead. I don’t want ‘Hot ‘n’ Cold (The Supervillain Remix)’ happening in my mom’s studio. Which is not an invitation for you to take it outside, because the house I grew up in is across the street and my mom is over there crying because my dad is dead. I should probably be with her, but I have a complicated relationship with my mom. I don’t have the spoons for this, so I’m here to dance it out.” When she stops talking, Lilith can feel the anxiety unfurling in her gut. Slowly she sinks to the floor with one hand on the barre, her knuckles clenched white as her focus narrows to how loud her pulse is and how there is totally air in here so it doesn’t make sense that she’s not breathing.

“Is she having a panic attack?” Felicity wants to know.

Barry looks from Ray to Leonard, equal parts concerned and alarmed. “Why aren’t you guys doing anything?”

“This happens sometimes,” Leonard explains in the most vulnerable tone Barry has ever heard come out of his mouth, “and when it does she doesn’t like to be touched.”

Ray nods and folds his arms to stop himself from reaching for her or Leonard. Neither of his significant others want or need physical contact when they’re overwhelmed. “Lil says being crowded makes it worse,” he says.

“Screw that,” Iris squats in front of Lilith without touching her because she knows physical contact might trigger her vision thing. “Lil, breathe.”

She sees an alternate universe where Mick and Leonard fight to the death and an alternate version of Barry kills Mick after he wins. Lilith swallows thickly and makes a raw noise in her throat as her mind stops messing with her matter. “No shoes on the floor that aren’t toe shoes,” she tells Iris.

Iris stands and kicks her heels off. Everybody else follows suit. Eventually a line of shoes forms next to the mirrors, starting where Lilith left her Doc Martens to the right of the doorway. Mick’s boots look like he stole them from a firehouse. Which he probably did. There are seats for spectators to the left of the doorway. During class they’re occupied by helicopter parents and older siblings wheedled into driving their younger siblings to and from the studio. Now they’re festooned with jackets, purses, and the odd superweapon.

Lilith puts her iTunes library on shuffle and sighs as she shifts her weight onto her knee. “Okay,” she walks to the center of the floor, “your dance space,” she gestures to one side of the studio, “my dance space,” she flails her hand at the other side.

“So you don’t want to dance with somebody?” Cisco asks as “Groove Is in the Heart” starts playing.

Lilith shakes her head and her hair flops over her face. “I don’t think anybody here can keep up with me,” she explains, “not with my knee re-stabilized.”

“I can salsa,” Cisco stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’ve been taking lessons since I was seven. I bet I could keep up with you.”

“Okay,” Lilith holds her hand out to him, “put your moneymaker where your mouth is.”

Cisco eyes Leonard warily. Leonard chuckles and says, “you don’t need my permission, kid.”

Lilith rolls her eyes at her boyfriend as Cisco shrugs and takes her hand. “I don’t think you can call Cisco a kid anymore,” she says.

“Why not?” Leonard tilts his head.

“Cisco is my age,” she points out as Cisco pulls her into proper closed position, “and you’re sleeping with me. If I’m not a kid, then neither is he.”

“That’s true,” Leonard capitulates. When they met, he wasn’t attracted to her because she was a kid. When he looked at her, all he saw was a means to an end—his endgame was murdering his former cellmate and walking away with fifty million dollars—but after the hostage situation he respected her enough to grudgingly admit she’d earned the cut she’d negotiated for. When she walked into the  _Motorcar_  and sat down across from him, he almost didn’t recognize her because she was comfortable in her own skin and unquestionably an adult. Leonard assumed she wasn’t attracted to men until he saw how she reacted to Ray that day in the studio. Which is why it took him nine months to make a move. Leonard thought her feelings for him would change how she felt about Ray. Instead she changed the game. Again.

Cisco’s height—or lack thereof—makes him the ideal dance partner for Lilith because she’s five-foot-one. Leonard is six-foot-one and Ray is six-foot-two, so they both tower over her. Cisco’s upper-body strength—or lack thereof—is less than ideal. When the song ends, Lisa snatches him away. Lilith holds her hands up in mock surrender. Iris grabs her hand as “Bootylicious” thumps out of the speakers and twirls her. Eddie gets the message and sits down. Ronnie and Caitlin are coupled off in one corner. Barry and Felicity are holding hands and swaying together. Lisa dances like she belongs at a club, which is incongruous because she’s barefoot in a brightly lit dance studio. Cisco is ridiculous because his dancing is a strange mix of New York style salsa and waving his hands in the air like he just doesn’t care.

Lilith sits at the edge of the studio after the song ends with her back to the mirror and her forehead propped against her kneecaps. Iris lowers herself to the floor with one hand on the barre and sits next to her. “Tell me about your dad,” she says.

Lilith turns to look at Iris without lifting her head up. “He teaches—taught—literature at Hudson,” she begins. “He has—had—tenure. He was into modern classics, mostly. He was pissed when I declared Art History instead of English Lit. He wanted to name me after Holden Caulfield.”

“But you hate  _Catcher in the Rye_ ,” Iris says incredulously.

“Yup,” Lilith sighs, “so after I decided the classics weren’t my jam we didn’t have much to talk about. I was listening to  _Danse Macabre_  on repeat before you got here,” she yawns through the word  _before_. “It was originally composed as a tone poem. It was mostly about sex and death and dancing skeletons, but there’s one part that reminded me of him: ‘All of a sudden, they leave the dance, they push forward, they fly.’ I started ballet lessons when I was three,” Lilith folds her arms loosely over her calves, “and I was homeschooled. I practiced for eight hours, studied for eight hours, slept for eight hours, and then did it all again every day for fourteen years. I knew it wasn’t normal, but I loved ballet so much that it never occurred to me to mind. He filled out my college applications, just in case. I thought I had nothing to live for after I got hurt, but then I went to Hudson. And made friends. And fell in love. And talked to people who weren’t my parents. And ate whatever I wanted. I became a whole person. I couldn’t have done that without my dad. He wanted me to push forward,” she swallows thickly. “He wanted me to fly.”

Iris puts her head on Lilith’s hunched shoulder and says: “I’m so sorry, Lil.”

Ray and Leonard remain after everybody else goes home. Lilith is laying on the floor with her ankles crossed, one hand over her breastbone and the other above her head. “I grew up across the street,” she informs them. “I spent so much time in here. I bled on this floor. I broke six of my toes. I lost my virginity in the dressing room upstairs to a danseur noble named Derek,” Lilith yawns through the word  _upstairs_ , “he was supposed to visit me in the hospital when I turned eighteen, but somebody took me out of the recovery wing on my birthday.”

Ray offers Leonard a fistbump. Leonard gives Ray a look that says  _Really?_  but he humors his boyfriend and presses their knuckles together.

Lilith rolls her eyes at the telltale noise. “I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have sex in here,” she yawns through the word  _here_ , “because I think all of the mirrors would make things interesting. I’m not propositioning either of you,” she clarifies, “because my dad is dead and I’m exhausted to the point of blabbermouthing. I’m just thinking out loud.” Lilith groans internally when she realizes she used the word  _blabbermouth_  as a verb. “Okay, time to go,” she makes a futile attempt to sit up and groans externally. “Maybe I’ll just sleep here tonight,” she huffs, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Leonard sighs and puts his shoes back on before he walks over and kneels beside her.

“No shoes on the floor that aren’t toe shoes,” Ray says with a totally straight face.

Leonard snorts and scoops all two hundred pounds of Lilith into his arms.

* * *

**August 2016**

* * *

Lisa’s ex-boyfriend Sam Scudder is apparently a metahuman with the power to trap people inside shards of glass. Which is what happens to Mick and Leonard and Lisa after Sam attempts to rekindle their old flame. Lilith screams until her throat is raw and her voice is hoarse. Ray spends the next two days working the problem at S. T. A. R. Labs. Lilith doesn’t sleep for fifty-nine hours straight. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the future and her catastrophizing tendencies.

Ray talks to her on their way home, but words aren’t helping. Lilith flops onto the giant couch and stuffs her cane between the cushion and the arm before she clenches her fists in the fabric of her skirt. Ray pours himself a glass of scotch and then pours another for Lilith. When he sits beside her, he sets the bottle on the coffee table.

Lilith drinks her scotch all at once and scrunches her face in disgust. “Gross,” she says. With that, she grabs the bottle and pours herself another glass. After her third, Ray takes the bottle and puts it out of her reach. Lilith snorts and uses the handle of her cane to drag the bottle across the coffee table.

Ray covers the hand holding her cane with one of his and puts the other on her thigh, careful to avoid putting pressure on her knee. “Lil, stop.” What he means is,  _stop overthinking this_.

Lilith inhales a shuddering breath. “I don’t know how,” she says. Barry once said that the particle accelerator explosion made people more of who they are. Lilith was prone to overthought and now she’s preternaturally aware of the multiverse. Irony doesn’t even begin to cover it. “I’ve seen what our future is without him and I don’t want it. I can’t stop thinking,” she gulps through her tears, “make me stop thinking.”

“I can do that,” Ray says. Not thinking is probably their best option right now. Loving a criminal is a variable he never factored in, but he doesn’t want a future without Leonard either.

When he kisses her, she tastes like scotch and salt. Lilith’s cane clatters against the coffee table as Ray pins her to the couch with his body, her thighs falling open to make room for his hips. It took him a while to get comfortable with the notion that her disability isn’t necessarily synonymous with fragility. Leonard isn’t gentle with her because she knows what he’s capable of and she’s never flinched, not when he killed someone in front of her during the hostage situation and never once after that. Ray is now intimately aware that he doesn’t have to be gentle with Lilith. Which is good, because in this moment tenderness is not what he wants or what she needs.

She sees a whole other world inside the mirror. She sees Lisa trapped there in mind but not in body. She sees another version of herself pass another version of Leonard on the street in Los Angeles after he murders his former cellmate. She sees herself a hundred and fifty-odd years from now leaving flowers at the feet of memorial statues of heroes and villains who’ve become legends. She sees a pandimensional satellite floating abandoned outside time and space. She feels Ray move inside her as he moans against her throat.

Sam robs a jewelry store before he seeks Lisa out and imprisons the jeweler in the pane of a glass case. Iris investigates when the jeweler is found stuck inside the case itself three days later and texts Lilith:  **the mirror thing isn’t permanent** and then clarifies,  **it wears off in a few days**.

Lilith groans at the noise and slowly comes back to herself. Ray is sleeping on top of her with his nose buried in the nape of her neck and his torso covering her back. At least it feels like he’s happy to be there, if the morning wood between her thighs is any indication. Apparently they fell asleep with the fingers of their left hands intertwined. Lilith yawns into the palm of her right hand and winces as the hangover asserts itself.  _I’m awake_ , she thinks as she squeezes her eyes shut and groans again,  _but at what price?_

When she opens her eyes, Lilith realizes Leonard is sitting in the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. Ray sits up and blinks through the haze before he focuses on their boyfriend. Lilith unfolds herself from the couch and hobbles around the coffee table without bothering to pick up her cane. Ray follows her, pulling up his briefs and kicking his pants off as he goes. He slept with his fly unbuttoned and his briefs pulled down, but he never actually took his pants off. Lilith is wearing a sundress and no underwear. Her panties are caught on a corner of the coffee table and she left her bra in the bathroom when she got up to pee at some point last night.

Leonard rises to meet them and they come together in a tangled embrace. One of his hands squeezes Ray’s shoulder, his other arm goes around Lilith’s waist. Ray puts one hand on Leonard’s face and kisses him, careful not to elbow Lilith in the process. Leonard moves his right hand from Ray’s shoulder to his neck and strokes his thumb over the line of Ray’s jaw. Lilith ends up with her arms between Leonard’s jacket and his shirt as she presses as much of herself as possible against him.

“I’m fine,” Leonard says in an exasperatedly fond voice. He was trapped in a pocket dimension for three days and somehow he’s less of a hot mess about it than Lilith or Ray. Then again, getting drunk and robbing a bank half-cocked is how he coped when she went to another timeline a few months ago. Leonard smooths his left hand up from her waist over her ribcage before he tilts her head up and kisses her. It turns greedy quick, the familiar twist of his hand in her hair enough to make her heart clench horribly.

Lilith swallows thickly. “Hi,” she exhales the greeting in a raw, wrecked voice.

“Hi there.” Leonard gives her the soft, genuine smile he only puts on for people he loves. “I’m home.”


	5. One Day We’ll Get Nostalgic for Disaster

**Somewhere, billions of years ago,**  
**a star died to put the marrow in my bones**  
**and I ought to make good use of that.**

 **I am the result of ten million factors all**  
**working against me ever coming into existence**  
**and I am here anyway.**

Ashe Vernon, “This Year”

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 4**  
One Day We’ll Get Nostalgic for Disaster

* * *

**September 2016**

* * *

Roy Harper relocates from Monument Point to Keystone City after Thea blows his cover. Eddie’s cousin Thad—who works as a newscaster for WKEY-TV in Keystone City—starts calling him the Red Hood. Apparently there was a whole gang of Red Hoods in Gotham City, once upon a time. Now there’s a masked vigilante who kills Gothamite gangsters. Roy is something in between those extremes.

Roy eventually approaches Felicity to gather information for him on the people behind a highly addictive hallucinogenic drug called Haze. It takes her a few days to realize that all roads lead to pharmaceutical corporate giant Greg Jupiter and his nephew.

“Roy?” Felicity holds her phone between her shoulder and her ear as she types, “I have the intel you wanted.”

“Maybe they’re not related to her,” Cisco says dubiously.

Lisa scoffs. “He looks exactly like Lil,” she tilts her head at the image of on Felicity’s monitor. Jarrod Jupiter is a redheaded, freckly boy with skin so pale he probably has an iron deficiency. Lilith is chubby and short where he’s thin and gangly, like he hasn’t totally grown into himself, and his hair is strawberry blonde while hers is bright titian. Otherwise, the resemblance is striking.

“He’s her brother,” Caitlin scoots her chair so she can look at the screen over Felicity’s shoulder, “they have the same eyes. And the exact same earlobes.”

“She never told us she had a brother,” Ronnie says as he leans over Caitlin with his hand on the arm of her chair behind her elbow.

“She told me he put a hallucinogen in her drink at a charity event once,” Barry remembers. “Maybe whatever he dosed her with was a precursor to the drug he’s making now.”

Lilith chooses this opportune moment to emerge from the elevator, stifling a yawn with the palm of her hand. “What’s happening?” she wants to know.

Felicity takes a sip of her latte before she speaks. “Roy called me last week and asked if I could find out who was supplying and dealing a drug called Haze. Apparently your brother—”

Lilith sighs, “half-brother.”

“Sorry,” Felicity stretches the _y_ sound out awkwardly because clearly Lilith has issues with Jarrod that are none of her business, “your half-brother is the one who makes the drug, but your uncle’s the one selling it. I told Roy to come here for their names just in case his line wasn’t secure, but really I wanted to make sure you were okay with him putting them away.”

“I’m totally okay with it,” Lilith says, “and I’m going to help.”

“How exactly are you planning to do that?” Barry wants to know. “No offense,” he gestures vaguely at her cane, “but you’re not physically capable of making a drug bust.”

Lilith snorts. “Have you noticed how well Ray’s been doing in the field lately?”

“Yeah,” Barry says in confusion, “he’s closed a bunch of those missing persons cases that piled up after the particle accelerator exploded, the ones we put on the backburner during the whole Wellsobard thing.”

“Yup,” Lilith pops the  _p_  sound. “Haven’t you wondered how he’s doing it?”

“You’ve been helping him,” Felicity deduces, “with your powers.”

Lilith nods. “Ray connected my neural uplink with the one in his exosuit,” she explains. “I show him where the missing people are, dead or alive. I probably should’ve done it a long time ago.”  _I’m never going to put on a supersuit and fight crime. At least not in this reality_ , she thinks,  _but I can help Ray do what makes him happy_.

Cisco practically bounces out of his chair and walks over to Lilith. “Omen in the house!” he grins and offers her a fistbump. Lilith pounds their knuckles together and they blow it up before Cisco returns to his desk. At least her codename isn’t Cassandra. Lilith hobbles to the elevator and descends to Level 300 where the box Ray left on her desk is waiting. Inside there’s a spare uplink he built so she can share her powers with people who aren’t him when she’s ready.

Roy arrives in his red hoodie and a pair of black cargo pants, armed to the teeth with concealed weaponry. Felicity walks to him with her heels clicking deliberately over the floor of the cortex and hugs him. Roy hugs her back and exhales a heavy sigh, the weight of isolating himself for months unburdening itself from his shoulders. Not the penance or redemption he wants, but it’s something that matters just as much: friendship and belonging.

“Hey,” he says thickly.

“Hi,” her smile is wasted on the empty space over his shoulder, but Roy can hear it in her voice.

Roy untangles himself from her and says hello to Barry. Caitlin introduces him to Ronnie. Cisco yanks him into a manly hug, one with open-palmed pats on the back. “Who’s she?” Roy stares at Lisa and his eyes linger on the gold gun strapped to her thigh.

“Lisa,” she offers him her hand like she expects him to kiss it and pouts when he doesn’t.

Cisco rolls his eyes and says, “she’s my girlfriend.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. Cisco shrugs. He’s used to people wrongfully assuming Lisa is out of his league. He’s not insecure about what other people think because she’s the one who pursued him. Aggressively. “What about her?” Roy folds his arms and looks at Lilith, the other unknown quantity in the cortex.

She sees Roy being forcibly injected with something that makes him harder, better, faster, stronger until it wears off. She sees him pass his mantle to a tiny brunette with ferocity in her gaze. She sees a Vietnamese girl touch his face tenderly with poisonous hands. She sees a girl in a red hood standing between Connor and his half-brother Robbie. She sees an alternate universe where Jarrod kidnaps her and uses her powers to make his nightmarish hallucinations into reality.

“I’m Lilith Clay,” she yawns through her surname, “my half-brother is your druggist and my uncle is your kingpin. I’m going to show you where they are.”

Joe and Eddie arrest her half-brother and their uncle on felony charges after Roy busts them. Lilith uses her powers to record what is, for all intents and purposes, bootleg footage of Jarrod making the drug and Greg supplying it to dealers on both sides of the river. Iris covers the trial for C. C. P. N. and provides the precinct with evidence from a source who chooses to remain anonymous. Jarrod and Greg are sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for federal drug trafficking and fined ten million dollars each.

Roy takes a dose of Caitlin’s vaccine for Jade—the poisonous metahuman who touched his face in her vision—in the aftermath of the drug bust. Lilith has a hunch she isn’t going to want it.

* * *

After she brings Sara back to life using the Lazarus Pit, Nyssa changes her surname to Raatko, takes up the mantle Sparrow, and becomes a masked vigilante in Starling City. Laurel is the Black Canary, so Sara becomes White Canary and fights crime alongside her sister. Sara takes Cindy back under her wing and eventually she joins the team as Sin. Nyssa befriends an angry lesbian with avian abilities who calls her alter ego Dove and invites her and her girlfriend—a girl with wings a past lives complex who calls her alter ego Hawkgirl—to join their team. In time, they become the Birds of Prey.

Felicity asks Laurel to help put an arms dealer named Milo Armitage away as a favor to Lilith. Laurel tries and fails to take him to court. When she investigates him, she realizes he’s married to a woman named Sandra Hawke. It sticks in her mind like a thorn until she remembers Oliver cheated on her with Sandra before he cheated on her with Sara. When she realizes Oliver was with her nine years ago and Sandra has an eight-year-old son, Laurel is so shocked she actually spits a mouthful of latte onto her desk. Fortunately she manages to avoid damaging her laptop, but her case files aren’t so lucky.

It takes her longer than she’s proud of to tell Oliver what she knows. Which has a lot to do with how they were together when his son was conceived and a little to do with her suspicions that he already knows. He doesn’t take it well. He remembers foiling Milo’s attempt to acquire the Markov prototype three years ago. He thought the potential buyer would’ve taken care of Milo for him after the device was destroyed. Apparently not.

Oliver becomes a vigilante again because that’s his coping mechanism. Thea has been Red Arrow for a few months, so the papers start calling him Green Arrow. After he brings Milo to justice, Laurel and Diggle stage an intervention.

“You can’t solve all your problems by catching bad guys, man.” Diggle folds his arms. “You know why Felicity left—”

“Don’t,” he growls. Oliver hasn’t taken Felicity’s absence well, either.

“Felicity left,” Laurel cuts in, “because even though you acknowledge that you have serious emotional problems which render you incapable of doing anything with yourself beyond masked vigilantism, you refuse to do something about it because you think you’re incapable of being happy when really you’re just afraid. Felicity is happy without you, and you’ve been using that as another excuse to avoid getting your shit together. Ollie, you have a son,” she moves to touch his face and forces him to look at her, “you have to get your shit together if you want to be a part of his life.”

Lyla refers Oliver to Marnie Herrs—a therapist who has a contract with A. R. G. U. S. and works exclusively with the Suicide Squad—so he can talk to somebody about what he’s been through and what he’s done without worrying that his psychiatrist might call the police.

It takes a couple months for him to cease deflecting and start talking. Once he does, he can’t stop.

* * *

**October 2016**

* * *

Lilith hobbles into the bathroom one morning and throws up an offering to the porcelain gods.  _The hell_ , she thinks.

“Lil,” Ray lingers in the open doorway with concern evident in his voice, “what’s wrong?”

Leonard brushes her bangs aside as he kneels to her left and presses his palm against her forehead to check for a fever she doesn’t have. “Are you sick?” he wants to know.

“No,” Lilith spits bile into the toilet and groans. “I’m late,” she uses the rim of the sink to pull herself to her feet and leans over the sink itself as she clarifies, “over two months late.” With that, she puts the seat down and flushes the toilet. Leonard stands in one smooth motion and folds his arms as he processes the implications of this new information. Lilith squeezes toothpaste onto the bristles of her electric toothbrush and starts cleaning her teeth to avoid filling the awkward silence with babble.

“Wait,” Ray says in a soft voice because he doesn’t want to exacerbate her internal screaming, “late as in you missed your last two periods?”

“Yup.” Lilith nods as she finishes brushing her teeth. Anxiety remixes her guts as she grips a flosser in her right hand. Meanwhile, the knuckles of her left hand are clenched white on the edge of the sink because she didn’t bother to bring her cane into the bathroom with her.

Ray retreats into their bedroom. Which doesn’t make her internal screaming louder because she’s known he wants kids since he brought it up on their second date. Leonard is the one who leaves town when things don’t go according to plan.

Lilith forces herself to look at him in the mirror. “If you want out,” she sighs in a futile attempt to unclench her shoulders, “I won’t ask you to stay.”

Leonard closes the distance between them in three steps and takes her right hand in his left. Ray told him that she mentioned they would need three bedrooms before they bought a house together. Which got him thinking about the possibility of having kids with them in the future. Apparently the future is now. Leonard is an overthinker too, but he doesn’t second guess everything the way Lilith does. Instead he adapts. At least his father taught him what not to do.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Leonard promises as he curls the fingers of his right hand over her elbow and lets Lilith hold onto his forearm as she turns to face him.

She sees him teaching Lisa how to ice skate, moving backward while she wobbles in front of him. She sees their father go to prison for murdering Roscoe Dillon, her figure skating coach and her first boyfriend. She sees his father being released from Iron Heights and makes a mental note to have Felicity look into that.

Ray is doing something in the kitchen when she hobbles through the bathroom door. Lilith flops onto their bed and exhales a soft  _woo_. “Why did you leave?” she asks.

“Don’t you know?” he asks, because at this point it’s safe to assume his precognitive girlfriend knows pretty much everything.

“I’ve got a theory,” Lilith shrugs, “but I need more than  _because you became my weakness_  to believe you’re okay with raising a kid I’m ninety-seven percent sure isn’t biologically yours.”

Leonard sits on the edge of their bed to her left and exhales a sigh. “I didn’t think about the job for months,” he begins, “just you. I’ve never loved anyone like I love you. With you, things heat up. I lose my cool,” he makes a disgruntled noise in his throat and reluctantly clarifies, “I didn’t handle it well.”

Lilith snorts and somehow manages to cook up a nonverbal  _you don’t say_  with a side of sarcasm without saying anything at all. “What’s changed?” she wants to know.

Leonard smiles despite himself.  _Everything_ , he thinks. “I’m all in,” he reaches out and touches her belly, splaying his fingers over her stomach and feeling the aftershocks of her laughter under his palm. “I came to the  _Press Box_  that night to tell you that.”

Warmth unfurls in her chest like ivy. “So,” Lilith props herself up on her elbows, “the Rossetti paintings you stole for me were basically your version of a marriage proposal.”

Leonard hums in agreement and strokes his thumb over her stretch marks through the material of her camisole. “Speaking of proposals,” he smirks at her as their boyfriend returns from the kitchen with a breakfast tray loaded with bacon and eggs and waffles. Leonard loves Ray the same way he loves Lilith, but he never would’ve gone anywhere near someone like him if it wasn’t for her. “I know she found the ring a few days after we picked it out,” he says as Ray sits on the edge of their bed to her right, “what I don’t know is why it’s taken you five months to pop the question.”

Lilith throws his socks and underwear in with her laundry every week because he sends his other clothes out to be dry-cleaned. Ray must’ve subconsciously wanted her to find the ring. Otherwise he would’ve picked a better place to hide it. Which means his lollygagging has nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the last person Ray proposed to was murdered right in front of him. Lilith renegotiates herself into an upright position as a Ray puts the breakfast tray on the floor and Leonard steals a piece of bacon. “If it helps at all,” she informs him, “I’m going to say yes.”

“It does.” Ray grins at her. “It creates a comfort zone.”

Lilith rolls her eyes. “I regret choosing to rewatch  _Buffy_ and  _Angel_ with you,” she eyes the breakfast tray suspiciously. “Tell me you didn’t turn my engagement ring into a choking hazard.”

“I’m not going to propose today.” Ray sits on their bed to her right and slowly moves his right hand from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. “I’ve been planning something for months. I know grand gestures aren’t your jam, but you’re going to love this one.”

Lilith slumps until her forehead occupies the space between Ray’s neck and shoulder; instead of making her anxiety worse, his touch becomes her fulcrum. At the same time, she reaches for Leonard’s hand; he intertwines their fingers and uses his other hand to offer her a plate of waffles topped with melted butter and powdered sugar. “You need food,” he says smoothly.

Lilith narrows her eyes at her boyfriend. “Don’t you dare say I’m eating for two,” she warns him.

“You’re pregnant,” Leonard retorts. “This changes things. Again.”

“I know.” Lilith sighs and snatches a pair of utensils from the breakfast tray. All the better to eat her waffles with.  _I’m not ready to be a mom_ , she thinks,  _but I’m ready to be married now. I got here somehow. I’ll get there, too_.

Lilith has bloodwork done to confirm her pregnancy the next day. Sandra goes to Starling City later that week to convince Milo to sign the divorce papers she had served to him in prison. Lilith bingewatches the first season of  _Gravity Falls_ with Connor, Wally, Inez, and Felicia while Iris’s siblings and their spouses have a date night and Sandra visits Iron Heights. Ray sends a car to pick her up the next morning with a note that says:  _use the nanotech you keep in your purse now so it’ll work before you get home_. Lilith slowly bends and unbends her knee in the backseat while the nanotechnology kicks in.

When she hobbles into their house, there’s a bouncy castle in the backyard.

“The hell,” Lilith says.  _Oh my god_ , she thinks.  _It has turrets. And a slide_. And it’s actually less of a grand gesture than she thought it might be, which makes her love it more. Ray must’ve planned it that way.

Leonard is sitting at their long mahogany table with his laptop open in front of him; he closes it when she hobbles into the room. “This is what happens when you tell someone like Ray that you didn’t have a childhood,” he smirks at her.

“I totally had a childhood,” Lilith retorts, “it was just ballet oriented.” Leonard scoffs. Lilith narrows her eyes at him. “Are bouncy castles safe for pregnant people?” she wants to know.

“I don’t think Ray would’ve acquired one if they weren’t,” Leonard points out.

Lilith hobbles over to him because re-stabilizing her knee doesn’t compensate for the extension in her Achilles tendon, or lack thereof. She puts her purse on the table and moves her hand slowly from his shoulder to his face. Her fingers curl at the nape of his neck as she slants her mouth over his. Leonard rises to meet her with one hand on her waist and the other twisting into her hair. “Are you okay with me marrying Ray and not you?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

Leonard presses their foreheads together as he catches his breath. It doesn’t matter to him whether they’re legally married or not. It won’t change how he feels. “Ray is the one who needs to be married on paper,” he reluctantly untangles his hand from her hair, “and I can give that to both of you.”

Lilith nuzzles his nose with hers before she pulls back. Leonard has somehow grown accustomed to getting overwhelmed by feelings, so he takes his hands off her and rolls with it. Lilith turns and leans back against the edge of the table, keeping her weight off of her knee out of habit while she toes her ballet flats off and lifts her skirt. Leonard makes a low, appreciative noise in his throat when she rolls her stockings down.

“No,” Lilith says firmly as they make their way to the back door. “I refuse to have sex in the bouncy castle. I’m going down the slide, not going down on anyone.”

Leonard gives her a significant look because they both know Ray invented the nanotechnology that re-stabilizes her condyloid joint so she can do certain things in bed a girl can’t do without getting on her knees.

Lilith makes a garbled noise that sounds like the bastard offspring of a laugh and a groan. “Shut up,” she orders even though he didn’t actually say anything out loud.

Leonard grins as he holds the door open for her. “After you,” he says.

Lilith hobbles across the low deck and down the stairs into the backyard. Ray is sitting at the bottom of the slide barefoot in a t-shirt and jeans. “Hey,” he smiles at her. “How was your night?”

“I’m less terrified of being a mom than I was three days ago,” she smiles back and clarifies: “if I can handle simultaneous third graders—including one with superpowers—I can totally handle one infant.”

“We can totally handle one infant,” Ray corrects her gently. “You won’t be doing it alone.”

“That’s true,” Leonard says as he sits beside Ray at the bottom of the slide.

“You’re being shockingly cool about this,” Ray grins at him.

Leonard smiles back. “This is what I want. Our family,” he tilts his head up to look at Lilith and his gaze lingers on her belly. “Our future.”

Ray kisses Leonard with one hand on his face and the other fisted in the fabric of his shirt. Leonard twists one hand into his hair when he kisses back. Lilith tugs her bottom lip between her teeth as she watches them and steadfastly refuses to change her mind about having sex in the bouncy castle. Leonard picks Ray’s pocket with his other hand and offers the black velvet box to her. Lilith opens it and squawks at the size of the emerald—it looks bigger than it did five months ago, somehow. Ray breaks the kiss and turns to look at her.

Leonard smirks. “This is what happens when you don’t like diamonds,” he says, his voice rendered hoarse by Ray’s kisses.

“I had a plan,” Ray says mournfully. “I was going to get down on one knee.”

Leonard snorts. Lilith has a tendency to ruin the best laid plans of superheroes and supervillains.

“Well,” she shrugs, “you still can if you want to. I haven’t put on the ring yet.”

Ray kneels and takes her left hand in both of his. “I’ve never met anyone who sees the world like you do,” he begins. “I’m not just talking about your powers. It’s more than that. It’s how you see other people,” he looks at Leonard, “how you choose to love them. I’m not going to ask a question I already know the answer to,” Ray takes the open box from her and curls his fingers gently around her left wrist as he says: “marry me, Lil.”

“Hell yeah.” Lilith nods so her hair flops over her face as he puts a ring on it. Ray stands and spins her into a kiss that steals the breath right out of her throat.

* * *

**November 2016**

* * *

Lilith goes dark one day when she’s supposed to be at _The Red Shoes_ because she started teaching a couple of classes a week after her father died. After they check with Iris and Caitlin and Felicity and Sandra and Patty to make sure she isn’t with her friends, Cisco activates the tracking device he put inside her cane. When they get to the studio, the cane is hooked over the barre but she’s nowhere to be seen.

“Maybe she went to an alternate universe again,” Cisco suggests, “like last week, remember?”

Leonard nods. At least he didn’t cope by robbing a bank this time. Instead he just got really drunk with Mick and Mark, then picked an ugly fight with her after she returned to their dimension. Which is why she’s avoiding him on his birthday instead of having makeup sex with him in the Jacuzzi, and why she would’ve made him wait outside at the clinic when she went in for her first ultrasound if Ray hadn’t talked her down.

Ray squeezes his shoulder. “I’m going next door to ask if Addie knows where Lil is.”

Leonard sighs. “Cisco,” he tilts his head to look up at where the ceiling meets the mirrored walls, “can you access the video feed from that camera?”

“Of course.” Cisco extracts his tablet from his bag and gets it done. “Okay,” he skims through the footage until he sees Lilith hobble into the studio, then keeps going as she stretches before she hauls herself up with one hand on the barre.

Leonard’s jaw clenches when he sees a man he recognizes pause in the doorway and shoot what looks like a bulky tranquilizer dart filled with blue liquid into her bare upper arm. It must be a black market version of the vaccine Caitlin invented, because her powers stop working. Leonard’s hands fist so hard he draws blood from his palms with his fingernails when the man leads Lilith out of the studio at gunpoint. Before he walks up the stairs he looks over his shoulder and says: “I’ll see you and your sister at home if you ever want to see her again.” Then he smirks and adds: “Happy birthday, Lenny.”

Cisco looks from Leonard to Lisa and feels the urge to back away from their identical deathglares. “Who the hell was that?” he wants to know.

It’s the one enemy he didn’t put down because he thought he was already out of the game. “Our dad,” Leonard says in a voice flat and sharp like a knife. “Are you in?” he asks his sister, “or out?”

“I’m so in.” Lisa nods. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Cisco says nervously, “Ray’s not back yet. I don’t think we should go anywhere or do anything without him.”

“Oh, you’re not coming with us,” Lisa gives him a smile that’s half sweetness and half strychnine, “this is between us and dad. Don’t try to stop us, Cisco. I love you, but I’ll hurt you if I have to.” With that, she kisses him on the cheek and leaves a blood red mark in the shape of her lips behind when she goes.

Ray is going to be pissed off when this is done, but he didn’t bring the exosuit to the studio and Leonard doesn’t have time to hold out for a hero. Lisa breaks no less than a dozen traffic laws on their way back to the trailer park they lived in with their father before he went to prison. Leonard inhales sharply and strokes his fingers over the familiar surface of his cold gun. This only ends one way, and he doesn’t want the man he loves to see it.

Barry destroyed everything in this world concerning Leonard, including his family tree. Which is how Lewis Snart was released from Iron Heights. It took him months to get back in the game and make a plan to get even with his son for putting him in jail.

Lilith is grateful he tied her hands in front of her instead of behind her back and he didn’t restrain her legs at all because she can’t run away. She elbows him in the face and kicks him in the balls simultaneously. When he drops his gun, she grabs it and scrambles backward. Her knee screams in protest. She hears Don whisper in her ear, _never draw on someone unless you’re prepared to shoot them_. She’s so unprepared. She doesn’t want to kill him. She’s never actually killed anyone. She thumbs the safety off and shoots out his kneecap instead. _I’m so glad Don taught me how to use a gun_ , she thinks, _I’ll totally send her a thank you card if I survive this_.

Leonard flings open the door to the double wide, the cheap hinges squealing in his wake. He takes one look at Lilith—the fresh bruise on her jaw, the gun in her shaking hands—and shoots his father in the back without blinking. Lewis dies with a snarl on his face, his harsh blue eyes frozen over. Leonard holsters his cold gun and tugs his goggles down around his neck. Lilith thumbs the safety back on and drops her weapon. Her knee aches as she flops gracelessly onto the floor, squeezing her eyes shut so her tears won’t fall and forcing herself to just breathe. Leonard kneels before her and touches her face, careful to avoid putting pressure on her jaw.

This is on him. Worse, he’s too selfish to ever leave her again even if it might keep her safe. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice raw with residual fear.

Lilith doesn’t know whether he means their fight or his father and at this point she doesn’t really care. “I’m sorry too,” she swallows thickly, “I forgive you.”

“I lied before,” Leonard says as he extracts a knife from a hidden pocket on the inside of his jacket and slices through the zip tie binding her hands, “in the vault. I can’t live without you.”

Lilith winces as he helps her to her feet. “I think you probably could,” she says gently, “but you don’t have to.”

Lisa steps inside, her arrival heralded by the staccato beat of her heels against the floor. “You killed dad without me, Lenny?” she pouts. “You broke the pact we made after he went to jail.”

Leonard looks from Lilith to his sister and inhales slowly to calm himself down before he says, “he hurt her.”

Lisa eyes the bruise on Lilith’s jaw and nods. Leonard suspects his sister actually likes Lilith more than she likes him. “Makes sense,” she tilts her head as she looks down at the frozen corpse Leonard made of their father.

Cisco sends the recording to S. T. A. R. Labs while they’re in the car. Barry speeds to the trailer park too late to stop Leonard but in time to hear Lisa mention the pact they made to kill their father together if he ever got out of prison. “What did you do?” he yells.

“This is a family matter,” Leonard says. “It’s none of your business.”

“Yeah,” Barry retorts in a voice that falls somewhere between righteous indignation and shellshocked horror, “you breaking your promise to commit patricide is definitely my business.”

“How is this different from Simmons?” Lisa wants to know. “Lenny shot him in the face because he owed him money and kept you alive in the process. Which is a terrible motive for murder because people can’t pay you back if they’re dead,” she holsters her gold gun and cocks her hip, “but I digress.”

Leonard shrugs. “It sent a message to the other people who owed me money,” he explains while Barry glowers.

“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil,” Lilith quips in a futile attempt to calm the brewing storm.

“Nietzsche also wrote that the consequences of our actions are indifferent to whether or not we’ve ‘improved,’” Barry crooks his fingers like quotation marks around the word _improved_ , “in the meantime.”

Lilith nods and forces herself to look Barry in the eyes. Leonard puts one hand on the small of her back and draws his cold gun with the other. “I’m pregnant,” she informs Barry, “fourteen weeks. Len was protecting us.”

Barry processes the information in the blink of an eye and decides it isn’t relevant. “Lisa said they made a pact to kill their father a long time ago,” he protests, “he would’ve done it even if you weren’t pregnant. Hell, he would’ve done it if he’d never met you. Snart’s a cold-blooded killer, Lil. I can’t just let him get away with it.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Lilith shakes her head and her hair flops over her face. “I’m saying I’ll fight you on this,” she yawns through the word _fight_ and winces at the pain in her bruised jaw, “and you’ll lose.”

Barry sometimes forgets that Lilith is so much more than a benign metahuman who hangs out at S. T. A. R. Labs and takes naps in odd places. She’s the only person he knows who’s truly capable of stopping him. It occurs to him that he’s lucky someone like her manifested the power to make the space-time continuum her bitch on the regular instead of somebody who might use that ability to destroy the world.

In his ear, Cisco awkwardly says: “choosing between your deadbeat dad and your pregnant girlfriend is kind of a no-brainer, dude.”

“What would you have done if it were me?” Felicity chimes in softly, thinking of that night at Queen Consolidated with Oliver and the Count. “When it comes down to a choice between someone you love and someone who wants to hurt them, you choose the one you love even if it means doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.”

Barry exhales an exasperated noise because they’re not wrong. “Lil,” he says, “you can’t keep threatening me on behalf of the rogues’ gallery whenever you feel like it.”

“Or what?” Leonard puts his goggles back on as Lilith bites down on the _t_ at the end, “you’ll put me in the pipeline?”

“I will if I have to,” Barry retorts.

Leonard sighs and shoots him in the leg. Lilith closes her eyes against the glare. Barry screams as the material of his suit ices over and frostbite gnaws on his calf. “Today is my birthday,” Leonard rests the cold gun on his shoulder, “so I’m going to take you letting this go as your gift to me,” he tilts his head as he looks down on Barry, “but if you ever threaten my family again I won’t hesitate to put you down.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Barry groans.

“What, family?” Leonard deliberately enunciates the word. “That isn’t my family. That,” he looks at Lisa, “is just a dead man who can’t hurt anyone I love ever again.”

Leonard drives to S. T. A. R. Labs while Lisa sits in the backseat next to a frostbitten Barry. Lilith falls asleep in the passenger seat, her breath condensating against the window. Leonard drops them off before he takes her home.

Ray is waiting for them on the couch with his tie occupying the cushion next to him and his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows. Lilith’s purse is in the chair across from him and her cane is laid out on the coffee table, its crooked handle guarding an empty crystal glass. “This can’t happen,” he says, “not without me. I can’t lose either of you.”

“Okay,” Lilith picks up his tie so she can sit next to him, “you won’t.” Ray presses his left palm between her shoulder blades with his elbow crooked around her waist and scoops his other arm under her knees. His right hand curls into her thigh before he pulls her into his lap and kisses her hard.

Leonard sits beside them without touching because he doesn’t know what Ray wants or needs right now. Adrenaline is still fizzing through him, slow and delicious. “I’m not sorry,” he folds his arms, “you didn’t have your exosuit. I didn’t want him anywhere near you,” his jaw clenches around the word _him_ , “I need you safe.”

“Well,” Ray retorts as he looks up at Leonard and moves his right hand to Lilith’s hip, “I need you to stop making unilateral decisions like we’re not in a trilateral relationship.” With that, Ray uses his left hand to drag Leonard into a bruising kiss before he tugs his bottom lip between his teeth.

Lilith presses her back against Leonard’s chest and scrapes her nails into the nape of Ray’s neck. Leonard splays one hand over Lilith’s stomach and twists the other into Ray’s hair so his fingers brush hers.

“I’m glad you killed him,” Ray confesses. “I don’t agree with your methods but I can’t argue with your results.”

Leonard didn’t see that coming, but he’s not questioning it. “Is there cake?” he wants to know.

“Yup,” Lilith boops him on the nose, “there’s an ice cream cake in the freezer.”

When they were kids, their grandfather used to buy Leonard and Lisa ice cream cake for their birthdays. Which she knows. Leonard catches her forearm and kisses her palm before he gently bites the pulse on the inside of her wrist. When she squirms closer to him, his breath hitches in his throat. “I love you,” he says, “both of you.”

Apparently he loves Leonard enough to condone murder. Which should probably bother him more than it does. Ray exhales a heavy sigh. “We love you too,” he says.

Lilith attempts to untangle herself from them and show him the cake is not a lie. Leonard has other ideas. Lilith squawks when she ends up straddling him with his hands on her hips. Leonard smirks as she shifts her weight and grinds against him in the process. “How’s your knee?” he wants to know.

“Hurts,” Lilith shrugs, “but it’s nothing compared to how weird it feels to be stuck at one point in time. I can’t sense the future, or the past, or elsewhere. I didn’t realize how much my perception has changed until now.”

Leonard pulls her camisole over her head and drops it on the floor. Underneath lurks her comfy bra, a matte black thing with no underwire and a row of eyelets hooked over her sternum. Which is utterly unsexy, but it doesn’t extinguish the cool heat in his blue eyes. For some reason she’s always the first one to get naked even though both men look better without clothes than she does. Lilith wonders if they should talk the whole patricide thing through before the birthday sex. Then she decides that conversation might go better if they’ve blown off a little steam first.

Ray puts the hand that isn’t lingering on Leonard’s shoulder at the small of her back, his palm covering the base of her spine. “How does it feel to experience time linearly as opposed to non-linearly for the first time in years?” he wants to know.

“I feel blind,” she huffs. “I’m always preternaturally aware of how much the future affects the past and the past effects the future.”

“But not now.” Leonard smooths one hand under the waistband of her leggings and into her panties. His other hand moves to cup her breast and squeeze gently. He brushes his thumb slowly over her nipple through the fabric of her bra.

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know he’s in a particular mood, one that means he’s going to make a mess of her before tonight ends. “No,” she flushes when his finger strokes the length of her slit, “not now.”

“Good.” Leonard smirks and swirls his thumb over her clit.

Of course this is the moment her stomach chooses to gurgle. Lilith cackles and covers her mouth with her palm. Ray leans in so the warmth of his laughter puffs gently against her shoulder. Leonard chuckles low in his throat and it moves through him into his belly. “Okay,” she exhales a soft _woo_ , “in my defense: I’m pregnant and I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“No cake for you until after you have some real food.” Ray presses an open-mouthed kiss to a particularly sensitive place behind her ear, just above her swan tattoo, before he untangles himself from them. Then he goes questing into the kitchen.

Leonard is still moving his hand between her legs, but it’s too slow to create any real friction, so all he’s doing is making her frustrated. Which he knows.

 _Asshole_ , she thinks fondly. Aloud, she says: “I’d apologize for being held hostage on your birthday, but it was totally your fault. I don’t think getting kidnapped three times either by you or because of you sets a good precedent for our relationship.”

“Complete sentences,” Leonard exhales a melodramatic sigh and curls two fingers inside her. “Must not be doing this right.”

Lilith makes a high noise in her throat. “Rude,” she moans with a thread of indignation, “I was having—” her whole body trembles as a feedback loop of pleasure shudders through her, “— _words_.”

Leonard takes his other hand off her breast and twists his fingers into her hair. Lilith wraps her arms loosely around his neck and makes a noise she refuses to call a whimper because she’s so close it hurts in the best way. When he slows down, she growls at him.

“Say my name,” Leonard growls back.

“Len,” Lilith moans as the buildup to her orgasm coils between her legs. “Len, _please_ —”

Leonard hisses, “ _Yes_.”

Lilith kisses him before she comes and the shrill noise she makes when she does goes straight through him. Leonard hums in satisfaction as she clenches around his fingers, his thumb moving in slow circles over her clit to intensify the aftershocks.

Ray is watching them as he leans against the archway that leads into the kitchen. Lilith tries to stand and ends up sitting on the coffee table with her back to him, echoes of her orgasm fluttering under her skin. “I can’t walk,” she rolls her eyes at Leonard when he grins and clarifies, “my knee hurts too much.”

Ray crosses the room in a few steps and bends to scoop all two hundred pounds of her into his arms. As if on cue, her stomach rumbles again. Leonard takes a moment to get himself under control before he follows them into the kitchen. Lilith is occupying two chairs, one for sitting in and one for elevating her knee. Leonard takes the seat to her left and holds her gaze as he licks his fingers clean. Which is obscenely hot. Who knew? Not her.

“I’m making you scrambled eggs,” Ray puts a skillet on the burner and pours a bowl of beaten eggs and shredded cheese into it before he turns the knob and blue flames ignite below the metal.

“Why?” Lilith wants to know, “because all you know how to cook is breakfast food?”

“No,” Ray extracts a spatula from the porcelain jar shaped like a dragon that lurks next to the oven, “because you’re pregnant and pregnant people need protein.”

Lilith nods and folds her arms on the tabletop. “I might need a nap,” she yawns through the word _need_ , “that was almost as good as the time I came so hard I passed out after.”

Ray looks over his shoulder at her. Leonard tilts his head. “When was this?” he wants to know.

“When I was with Don,” Lilith hunches so her forehead presses against her forearms. “Not with either of you.”

Leonard smirks. “Challenge accepted.”

Lilith turns so the back of her skull curves into the crook of her elbow and looks up at him. “Nowhere in there did I issue a challenge,” she retorts.

“It’s my birthday,” Leonard says in his smoothest voice. “I’ll eat you out until you pass out if I want to.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the _y_ sound awkwardly because she isn’t comfortable with how forthright he can be sometimes even if everything he says is sexy as hell. “After cake and presents.”

Leonard hums low in his throat. “After cake and presents,” he agrees.

“By the way,” Ray turns the burner off and expertly maneuvers the eggs onto two plates, “your mom knows we’re engaged.”

“What,” Lilith blurts, her voice pitched higher with alarm.

“I assumed she knew,” Ray gives Lilith a pointed look, “you’ve been teaching beginner’s classes at the studio for months and I proposed weeks ago. I thought you must’ve told her by now.”

“I had an epiphany that I blamed my mom for my injuries because it was easier than blaming myself, so I’m trying to unlearn being mad at her for something that was never really her fault,” Lilith deadpans, “that doesn’t mean I want her involved with planning our wedding. I know she’s going to want the whole shebang,” she notices the hurt furrowing between his expressive eyebrows and deduces: “you want the whole shebang, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Ray puts a plate of eggs on the placemat in front of her and offers the other to Leonard before he sits to her right; he didn’t set a place for himself, so he must’ve had dinner without them earlier. “I do. I want to stand up in front of everyone we know and make a vow to love you for the rest of my life. I won’t apologize for that.”

“I can’t walk down the aisle,” Lilith protests, “especially not with a full length skirt. Or a train. Or even a long veil.”

“I’m walking you down the aisle,” Leonard points out. Which means he’ll also be walking down the aisle, because it’s his marriage too.

“Which doesn’t mean I won’t have an allergic reaction to the universe,” Lilith retorts. “I mean, we haven’t even talked about whether or not we’re getting married before Isaac is born—”

“Isaac,” Ray blurts. “After Isaac Asimov?”

“Yup,” Lilith elongates the vowel sound when she yawns again, “because you were inspired to shrink your exosuit by _Fantastic Voyage_ , you dork. Also your namesake published his first short story.”

“‘Marooned off Vesta,’” Ray grins. “I love that you know that.”

Leonard sometimes wonders how he ended up in love with two nerds. The amount of duplicate sci-fi and fantasy novels they had to sort through when they moved in together was ridiculous. None of them were his.

After cake and presents, Lilith situates herself on their bed with her back against the pillows before she takes her panties off and unhooks her bra. Ray is standing with his forearms and forehead pressed against the wall, making low noises as Leonard slides one slick finger into his ass. “I want you to touch yourself,” Leonard looks over his shoulder at Lilith as he adds a second finger and wraps his other hand around Ray’s dick, “but don’t come again without me.”

“Okay,” she exhales another soft _woo_.

Leonard scrapes his teeth over the knob of bone at the top of Ray’s spine and thrusts into him. Ray exhales a guttural sound as his hips jerk and his dick twitches in Leonard’s palm. Leonard doesn't feel the need to tease Ray because he doesn’t blush or squirm or flail like Lilith does. Instead he just gives and lets himself be taken, which makes Leonard want to give back. It’s overwhelmingly good, almost too much.

Lilith touches herself slowly, playing with her breasts and then soothing everywhere between her legs but her clit until her soreness from earlier becomes a sweeter ache. Leonard comes first, sinking his teeth into the flesh between Ray’s neck and shoulder when he does. Ray exhales hoarse _oh_ when his orgasm hits and collapses against the wall. Leonard runs one hand through Ray’s hair as he licks the fingers of his other hand clean all over again. Lilith inhales sharply and stops moving her hands. Ray grins crookedly at Leonard before he kisses him softly and goes to clean up in their bathroom.

Leonard focuses on her, naked on top of the covers with two pillows elevating her knee and her legs spread open for him. Voluptuous like the subject of a Renaissance painting. All blushing freckled skin and soft red hair. Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ as he stops at the foot of their bed and crawls up her body. Leonard palms her breasts, filling his hands with them and rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Lilith squirms as each stroke jolts through her, his hands on her breasts and his mouth on her belly striking lightning under her skin. Ray kneels beside her on their bed, pinning one hand above her head with their fingers intertwined before he leans in and slants his mouth over hers. Leonard puts his hands on her hips to hold her down before he presses his mouth to her clit and  _sucks_. Lilith unspools with her other hand fisted in the closest pillowcase.

It takes longer for her third orgasm to come. It shouldn’t be more intense than before, but Leonard keeps her from getting off until she’s clinging to Ray and the only words she knows are a litany of  _please, Len, please_.

Lilith passes out in the aftermath with Ray still holding her hand. Leonard kisses the inside of her thigh and grins against her skin. “Challenge completed.”

* * *

Barry seriously considers using the speed force to prevent Leonard from kidnapping Lilith so they won’t ever meet. Iris smacks him upside the head and texts her: **Barry is being an idiot**.

Lilith responds: **wait, what?**

Iris clarifies, **he wants to go back in time and stop Snart from kidnapping you because he thinks you’d take his side if only you’d never met your criminal boyfriend**.

Lilith reintroduces her palm to her face and texts Barry: **we need to talk**.

Barry speeds to the house and waits for Lilith to open the front gate even though they both know he could vibrate fast enough to move through it if he wanted to; it’s what might happen after he does that keeps him from making the attempt. Leonard installed a state of the art security system after she told him she was pregnant and Ray spent two weeks upgrading it, so now the house is basically a fortress with a bouncy castle in the backyard. Lilith is laying on the couch with throw pillows elevating her unstable knee, her cane lurking between the cushions and a book lying in wait on the glass surface of the coffee table; the bruise on her jaw has faded from vivid purple to a virulent yellow.

Barry sits perched on a corner of the coffee table before he folds his arms and raises his eyebrows. “Iris?” he asks even though he knows the answer.

Lilith nods. “Iris,” her fond smile metamorphoses into a more serious expression. “I want to tell you why going back in time to change things that don’t suit you isn’t a good idea, but I doubt you’ll take my word for it so I’m going to show you instead.”

Barry looks taken aback and his whole face contorts into a suspicious expression when he asks: “How exactly?”

“I learned how to transfer my visions through physical contact a long time ago,” Lilith shrugs. “Cisco didn’t tell you?”

Barry shakes his head and holds his hand out to her. “I don’t know if I can trust you,” he says in a voice that contains equal parts pain and conviction, “but I do know that I want to.”

“Okay,” Lilith takes his hand in both of hers and closes her eyes to focus on the visions.

Barry sees Eobard use the speed force to prevent his younger brother Robern from being born before he murders their parents. He sees Eobard meet a reporter named Rose who reminds him of Iris. He sees Eobard erase her husband from existence and sabotage her romantic relationships one by one until all Rose remembers is that her boyfriends die horribly. He sees Eobard traumatize her as a child so she grows up mute and dies young when she doesn’t love him back.

Barry gasps after she lets go of him and flails as he tries to catch his breath. “The hell,” he wheezes.

“Okay,” Lilith sighs, “the moral of this story is: going back in time to manipulate people into becoming who you want them to be instead of who they are doesn’t end well. Also, your mom wasn’t the first person Wellsobard killed because he didn’t get his way,” she yawns through the word _because_ , “it was just the first time his actions had negative consequences for him beyond not getting the girl.”

“I’m nothing like him.” Barry didn’t think of it as trying to manipulate her into being someone she isn’t. “I wouldn’t have actually—”

Lilith snorts. “Bitch, you might have.”

Barry refuses to dignify that with a response. Eobard isn’t the villain in question; Leonard is the problem here. “How can you love someone like him?” he spits out a frustrated noise. “How could you let him touch you after you watched him shoot his own father?”

“Well,” Lilith stretches the _l_ sound out as she unclenches her shoulders, “it wasn’t the first time I watched him kill someone.”

Barry waits for her to continue. “You can’t just say that and not elaborate,” he insists because he desperately wants to understand where his friend is coming from.

Lilith sighs. “Did you know eighty percent of disabled women are sexually assaulted?” she asks.

“No.” Barry gapes, horrified. “That’s awful.” Then he eyes her cane and assumes the worst. “Lil, did Snart—”

“No. Never,” Lilith says firmly, “he used the hostage situation to settle a score with his former cellmate. Len was going to kill him after the ransom was paid,” her mouth presses into a thin line as she articulates, “but then he tried to sexually assault me. I bit him. Len heard him scream and shot him in the head. I know he didn’t do it for me, but I’m still glad he pulled the trigger.” After she said  _thank you_ , he retorted  _I didn’t do it for you_ , and she snarked back  _who doesn’t like a thank you?_ because she was trying not to cry. Which made him laugh. Which in turn made her laugh. It was the moment, in hindsight, that Leonard stopped seeing her as a thing for the taking and started seeing her as a person worth respecting. “I’m glad his father is dead because the dude was literally the worst,” Lilith continues, “and I’m glad Len is capable of cold-blooded murder because someday we’re going to come up against a villain who is worse than him, a villain who’ll need killing. Len will do what’s necessary so you won’t have to tear yourself apart questioning whether or not you’re doing what’s right and prevent the people we care about from dying to galvanize you into action in the process.”

“Wait,” Barry says, “are you saying you’re with him so he’ll take our side during some hypothetical epic fight that might happen in the future?”

Lilith shrieks with laughter and presses her cupped palms over her mouth. “No,” apparently it’s her turn to wheeze. “Barry, my reasons for being with Len are selfish as hell. I’m with him because I love him,” she rolls her ankle and inhales sharply when the joint pops. “I don’t want a future without him in it.”

“Lil,” Barry sighs, “I can’t let Snart do whatever he wants because he might save the world in the future.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Lilith says, “I’m telling you he won’t hurt or kill anyone else unless they attempt to hurt or kill someone he loves. If he tries,” she yawns through the word _tries_ , “I’ll stop him. Okay?”

Barry thinks it over. Leonard could’ve killed all those criminals he helped bust after he and Lilith started dating. Violence is a means to an end for him, not an end in itself. That doesn’t excuse what he’s done, but at the end of the day Barry would rather stand with him than against him. “Okay,” he taps his fingers against the edge of the coffee table fast enough to make the glass shudder. “Where is Snart, anyway?”

Lilith closes her eyes. “Saints and Sinners,” she says, “with Mick, Mark, and that one dude Cisco codenamed Prism.”

“Bivolo,” Barry says.

“Yup.” Lilith shakes the nausea off. When she looks up, Barry has sped away.

Leonard texts, **did you tell the scarlet speedster where to find us?**

Lilith groans and flops back against the couch cushions before she responds: **is he trying to put Prism back in the pipeline?**

Leonard texts back: **no, he just challenged Mick to a game of pool**.

Lilith grabs her purse and moves through space-time without bothering to put shoes on. Bivolo flails and tips his stool over because she chose to occupy the space on the countertop between him and Leonard.

“Hi there.” Leonard smirks and puts his hand on her thigh in a way that blatantly says _mine_  without saying anything at all. Lilith is not a fan of how possessive he can be, but they’re in a dive bar so she doesn’t mind. Bivolo yanks his stool upright and scoots a safe distance away before he sits again.

“Hi,” Lilith says, “sorry for interrupting your dudes only night,” Mark snorts into his beer at that, “but I want to watch Barry kick Mick’s ass at pool.”

“Mick’s a shark,” Leonard says fondly, “he won’t lose.”

“Mick drinks whiskey like water,” Lilith retorts, “and Barry can’t get drunk.”

“That sucks.” Mark reaches for a napkin and wipes the beer off his face. “Hey, Lilith.”

“Hey,” Lilith waves once, curling her fingers into her palm one by one. “How’s Julie?”

“She’s great,” Mark grins. “She wants to meet you, actually.”

“Okay.” Lilith writes her cell number on a neon green post-it and hands it over. “She’s welcome at girls’ night. Which is on Tuesdays.”

Mark grins wider. “Because see you next Tuesday? As in, C-U-N-T?”

“Patty’s idea, not mine.” Lilith notices the bartender giving her the stinkeye. “Len, help me down?”

Leonard scoops up all two hundred pounds of her and puts her down on his barstool. Lilith cocks her head to look up at him. Leonard leans against the bar and smiles at her.

Bivolo locks glowing red eyes first with Mick, then Barry, then Mark, and finally Leonard. When he tries to make Lilith hulk out it doesn’t work, so he attempts to flee and leave her to clean up his mess. Mark doesn’t let him get too far before he slams his face into the countertop.

Lilith presses her palm against her stomach. Isaac must’ve telepathically blocked Bivolo somehow. Now that his brain is developing, he can project his feelings at her. Luckily, most of the time he just feels warm and loved and safe. Unluckily, fifteen week old fetuses don’t think in words so his thoughts are discombobulating at best and panic-inducing at worst. _Why didn’t you warn me, universe?_ she thinks.

Mark is kicking the stuffing out of Bivolo, Mick has set fire to the pool table, and Barry is screaming at Leonard about why patricide is unacceptable. With a sigh, Lilith extracts her phone from her purse and calls Cisco.

“Omen!” Cisco is grinning so hard she can hear it through the phone. “What’s up?”

“I’m at Saints and Sinners with Barry and the rogues’ gallery,” Lilith wonders if she should take cover behind the bar. “Prism is here and havoc is wreaking. I need your help—”

Leonard steals her phone and hangs up on Cisco.

“The hell,” she turns and sees Barry frozen against the wall, his body iced over. _At least he can’t out himself as the Flash if he’s on ice_ , she supposes.

Leonard puts her phone down on the bar and throws her over his shoulder. Lilith squawks and manages to avoid spilling the contents of her purse on the floor.

“The hell,” she looks over her shoulder as he carries her to the exit and stops time inside the bar so everyone affected by Bivolo will still be there when Cisco and Caitlin show up. “Len—”

“Quiet,” he snarls and bites the exposed flesh of her hip between her untucked shirt and the waistband of her skirt. It doesn’t break the skin, but she doesn’t need to be precognitive to know he means to leave a mark on her in the shape of his teeth. Leonard licks and sucks the skin he used his teeth on before he plops her into the passenger seat of his car. “Seatbelt,” he orders and watches her buckle herself in before he gets in the car himself.

Lilith doesn’t bother to point out that she could move through space-time if she wanted to get away. Leonard promised never to hurt her again and she trusts him to keep his word. “Where are we going?” she asks as he pulls out of the parking lot.

“I’m taking you home.” Leonard keeps his eyes on the road. “I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you.”

Lilith didn’t see that coming. “What does that mean?” she wants to know.

“I want you to stop using your powers until our son is born,” Leonard growls. “I’ll steal Caitlin’s vaccine from S. T. A. R. Labs if I have to, but I’d prefer to persuade you another way.” With that, he smooths one hand under her skirt and caresses her through the fabric of her panties.

Lilith doesn’t bother outlining the flaws in his plan because whatever Bivolo did to him is messing with his mind. Instead she makes a high noise in her throat when he rolls her clit between his thumb and forefinger. “Oh my god.”

“No,” Leonard smirks. “Just me.”

 _Cisco’s file on Prism said he induces rage by literally making people see red_ , Lilith remembers, _but his power also has lasting effects on the parts of the brain that regulate inhibitions. Len is a control freak who bottles up pretty much all of his feelings_ , she squirms when he pushes her panties aside and strokes one finger into the slick heat of her.  _This won’t end well_ , she thinks.

Leonard keeps one hand between her legs on their way home because apparently his rage manifests as intense orgasm denial. Lilith stops time before he lets out everything he keeps bottled up and leaves him suspended in their bedroom while she waits for the cavalry.

Cisco and Ronnie cannibalize the machine they rigged in the back of the S. T. A. R. Labs van during the last Prism incident to make a set of more portable versions. Caitlin walks into Saints and Sinners and time starts ticking again. Ronnie taps Mick on the shoulder and shoves the device in his face. Cisco does the same to Mark while Caitlin uses her powers to unmake the ice keeping Barry trapped against the wall.

“Where’s Lil?” Cisco wants to know.

“Snart took her,” Barry says, “he iced me before he threw her over his shoulder like a troglodyte and walked out. Bivolo’s powers didn’t work on her,” he scrunches his face in equal parts concern and confusion, “I don’t know why.” Caitlin and Cisco exchange worried looks. “I don’t think he’ll hurt her.” Barry blinks in surprise at what just came out of his mouth. _I cannot believe I just said that and meant it_ , he thinks.

“Why not?” Caitlin wants to know.

“Snart didn’t hurt her when he wasn’t in love with her so I doubt he will now that he is,” Barry sighs, “he probably took her home so they could have angry sex or something. I really don’t want to think about it.”

Caitlin presses her mouth into a thin line. “I don’t trust him,” she looks at Cisco, “we need to make sure Lil is okay.”

“I don’t want to walk in on angry sex,” Cisco protests, “can’t we just call her?”

“Isn’t that her phone?” Ronnie gestures vaguely at the bar.

Cisco wilts into a worried sigh. “Never mind.”

“Let’s go.” Barry stands and shakes it off.

“Not you,” Caitlin says firmly, “the full effects of Bivolo’s powers took time to affect you before. Ronnie is taking you back to S. T. A. R. Labs to make sure you won’t go crazy again.”

Barry sighs. “Fine,” he speeds over to apprehend Bivolo, who is still on the floor. Mick and Mark are nowhere in sight. “See you there,” he waves to Ronnie and is gone in a flash. Ronnie waves back and kisses Caitlin before he leaves.

After they arrive at the house, Cisco raises his eyebrows. “Is that a bouncy castle?” he grins through the rhetorical question, “and it has a slide.”

“Cisco,” Caitlin says, “one of our best friends might be in trouble. Focus.”

Lilith is barefoot but otherwise fully dressed when she opens the door. Caitlin exhales a sigh of relief when the only wound she sees is the fading bruise on her jaw from the week before. “Hi,” she holds out her hand. Cisco gives her phone back. “I’m fine,” she says gently when she notices Caitlin checking her for injuries. “Len bit me earlier, but—”

“Wait,” Caitlin looks taken aback, “he _bit_ you?”

“Is he a vampire or something?” Cisco wants to know. “That would explain why he wears a winter coat even during the summer,” he attempts a grandiose storyteller voice, “‘technically, as a vampire, he’s room temperature.’”

Lilith leans against the doorframe so she can pull her shirt up and her skirt down to show them the bite mark he left on her skin. “I gave him explicit permission to use his teeth on me during sex a long time ago,” she flushes as she explains. “I actually like it when he isn’t overdosing on rage.”

“Why didn’t Bivolo’s powers work on you?” Caitlin asks, changing the subject because Leonard’s biting kink is none of her business.

“I’m pregnant with a telepath,” Lilith explains as she hobbles back into the great room, “and what Bivolo can do effects the brain. Isaac must’ve blocked his powers somehow.”

“By the way,” Cisco says carefully, “Barry put Prism back in the pipeline. I know you think—”

“I think it’s inhumane,” Lilith sighs. “Which it is, but I don’t have the spoons for that argument right now.” With that, she plugs her phone into the charger underneath the coffee table and holds her hand out again.

Caitlin explains how to use the device before she hands it over; _wear protective glasses and push the button_ is the gist of it. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Caitlin gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze before she leaves.

“Cisco,” Lilith calls from the doorway as they walk back to Caitlin’s car, “you can come play in the bouncy castle tomorrow if you help me get my wheelchair out of storage.”

“Hell yes,” Cisco nods enthusiastically and his grin persists as he folds himself into the passenger seat.

Lilith watches them drive away before she hobbles into their bedroom and restarts time for Leonard. Then she holds up the device and presses the button.

“What is that?” Leonard asks after it cycles through the lightshow and powers down on its own.

“I don’t actually know what to call it,” Lilith shrugs and removes the protective glasses Caitlin gave her, “but it reverses the effects of Bivolo’s powers. I guess I’ll call it good.”

Leonard eyes the rigid set of her shoulders, the tension threaded through her spine, the bloodless knuckles holding the handle of her cane. “What’s wrong?” he wants to know.

“I might need space,” Lilith shifts her weight off her knee and puts the device on the bedside table, “from you.”

Leonard folds his arms, his expression guarded when he looks at her. “Why?” he asks in a deceptively calm voice. When he needed space, he left her for six months; he really doesn’t want her to do that.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ , bracing herself. “Len, you’re so scared of losing me you threatened to take my powers away. I know you weren’t thinking straight, but what Bivolo does lowers your inhibitions, so part of you must want to—”

“What I want,” Leonard clenches his jaw as he enunciates the word _want_ , “is to protect you.”

“How about no,” Lilith retorts as she props her cane against the bedside table. “What you want is to make sure I’ll never leave you like you left me,” she flops onto their bed and exhales another soft _woo_ , “like your mom left you. Which I won’t,” she props herself up on her elbows and holds his gaze so he knows how much she means it, “but you don’t get to touch me again until you’re ready to talk to me like people in love are supposed to do.”

Leonard takes a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm himself down. “What do you want me to say?”

Lilith tips her head back and makes a frustrated noise. “I want you to tell me how you feel instead of bottling things up and trying to screw me into submission. Which is totally what you were doing,” she exhales a noise that sounds like _ugh_ at the arrogant look on his face, “don’t try to pretend that it wasn’t.”

Leonard sighs. “I was trying to screw you into submission,” he grudgingly admits.

“Yup,” Lilith resists the urge to applaud because for him this is progress, “but there are some things you can’t fix with sex. Which is why I need you to use your words.”

Leonard sits on their bed to her left, careful not to touch her without permission. “I love you,” he says softly. “When you go where I can’t keep you safe, I feel powerless,” his voice gets rough to cover how vulnerable he feels when he clarifies, “ _weak_. I have a weakness and you’re it. I put a thousand miles between us and I still thought about you every second. I’m not strong enough to leave you ever again.” What he doesn’t say is that he knows she chose Ray over him after he left her. Which means Lilith is capable of leaving him. Leonard trusts her not to, but the idea is terrifying. “I don’t know how my mom could just walk out and not come back.” _  
_

“I think she was scared.” Lilith folds her hands over her belly, “she felt trapped by her marriage to your dad because they met in high school and then outgrew each other before she got pregnant with Lisa. I think she thought he wouldn’t let her go if she tried to take you and your sister with her, so she chose herself over her kids.”

Leonard narrows his eyes because he doesn’t need to be precognitive to understand the implications of all that insight. “You’ve had visions of my mom,” he deduces.

Lilith nods. “I get them sometimes,” she explains, “when you touch me. Which is why I’ve never pushed you to talk about your feelings before. I’ve learned more about you psychometrically than you probably ever wanted me to know. None of it changes how I feel.”

“Say it.” Leonard fists his hands in the covers because he wants to touch her so badly.

“I love you so much, Len.” Lilith sits up and looks at him over her shoulder. “Thank you for talking to me.”

Leonard has grown accustomed to his heart clenching in his chest when he looks at her. “Thank you for making me talk,” he says, and means it.

“You’re welcome,” Lilith says solemnly.

Leonard takes a deep breath to calm himself down, an exercise in futility with the nervous adrenaline frothing through him. “I want to touch you,” he says.

Lilith shakes her head so her hair flops over her face. “No,” she says, “take off your shirt and lie back for me.”

Leonard pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the floor. He can work with this. “What are you going to do with me now?” he wants to know.

Lilith piles the pillows neatly on the floor next to their bed and extracts two pairs of handcuffs from the drawer in their bedside table. “I’m going to cuff you to the headboard and then sit on your face,” she answers.

“ _Yes_.” Leonard offers his wrist to her with a look of such intense want that heat twists deliciously low in her belly. “Hey,” he looks up at her as she cuffs his right wrist to the headboard, “won’t that position hurt your knee?”

“No,” Lilith pulls her skirt and panties down and tosses them into the laundry basket that lurks in one corner of their bedroom, “I can’t take my pain meds now that I’m pregnant. I’ve been using the nanotech instead. Which does nothing for my ankle, so Cisco is going to help me get my wheelchair out of storage tomorrow. I’ll probably need it during the third trimester,” she straddles his torso and cuffs his left wrist, “because my ankles are going to swell from the extra weight and my body doesn’t need the extra stress.” With that, she unbuttons her shirt and throws it into the laundry basket to join her other clothes.

Leonard grins because he can feel how slick her thighs are from when he was stirring her up in the car before. Lilith was uncomfortable in this position at first because she thought she was too heavy for it. Leonard was delighted to prove her wrong. Now, he gently bites the inside of her right thigh and his dick twitches when her breath hitches around the word _harder_. Leonard sinks his teeth into her as hard as he can without drawing blood. Lilith grabs the headboard with one hand and the creak of the metal echoes in a cacophony with the moan caught in her throat. Leonard kisses his second mark before he flicks his tongue over length of her slit and nuzzles her clit with his nose. If he does this right he won’t be able to smell, taste, hear, see, or touch anything except her. Not that he’d want to with Ray in Ivy Town. Leonard licks and sucks her until Lilith shudders above him and her toes curl against his shoulders.

“Len,” she gasps, “make me come. Now.”

It’s an order, not a request, so he focuses on her clit until she screams for him. Lilith lifts her hips to give him some air as she leans against the headboard, just breathing. Then she moves back carefully until she’s straddling him again. Lilith wraps one hand loosely around his throat as she leans down to kiss him, tasting herself on his tongue when she licks into his mouth. Leonard kisses back and growls when she pulls away too soon.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she orders.

Leonard inhales sharply. Lilith has never been afraid of him before. Not even during the hostage situation. No wonder she didn’t want his hands on her. “I promise,” he vows, his voice raw. “I need to be inside you.”

Lilith raises her eyebrows like a challenge. “Do you think you deserve that?”

“No.” Leonard chuckles low in his throat because if he got what he deserved then he’d probably be in jail right now instead of in bed with her. “Doesn’t mean I won’t get what I want. I am sorry I scared you,” his smirk fades into something more sincere as he curls his fingers around the metal bars of the headboard to give his idle hands something to do, “let me show you how much.”

Ray opens their bedroom door before she answers. When he sees them, his eyebrows arch as his mouth unfurls in a grin. Then he notices the handcuffs.

“You’re back early.” Leonard sighs when Lilith turns to face Ray because she stops touching him in the process.

“Your hands are tied,” Ray retorts. “Literally. What did I miss?”

“Len overdosed on rage and decided to be an overprotective control freak,” Lilith explains, “but he got better.” Then she notices his eyes are edged in red and his eyelashes are clumped together at the corners. “You’ve been crying,” she says softly. “What happened?”

“Professor Choi—he was my faculty advisor when I was getting my doctorate in particle physics—died last night. It was very sudden,” Ray explains in a lackluster voice, “his wife is pregnant. I had to come home,” he pulls Lilith into his arms and buries his face between her neck and shoulder. “I needed to see you.”

Leonard raises his eyebrows. “How old is she?” he asks with his smirk audible in his voice.

Lilith rolls her eyes at Leonard over her shoulder as she strokes Ray’s hair. “Len, you’re twelve years older than me,” she points out, “you don’t get to judge.”

Leonard shrugs and the handcuffs clank against the headboard.

“I’ll uncuff him so we can go to bed.” Lilith pulls back just enough to put her hands on Ray’s face. “I don’t need to be precognitive to know you haven’t slept.”

Ray closes his eyes and presses their foreheads together before he kisses her desperately. Lilith scoops her fingers under his shirt to smooth her palm over his back. Ray splays one hand over Leonard’s stomach as he leans over her and strokes his thumb over the taut muscles under his skin. Leonard groans as his knuckles clench around the bars of the headboard.

“Ray?” Lilith procures the keys to both sets of handcuffs as Ray pulls his sweater and the t-shirt underneath it over his head. “Tell me what you need.”

“I don’t want to lie awake thinking about this.” Ray says. “I need you,” his eyes darken with something other than sorrow when Lilith bends over Leonard to uncuff his hands, “both of you.”

Lilith props the pillows back against the headboard as Leonard sits up and massages his wrists. “How?” he wants to know.

“Well,” Ray thinks it over, “take off your pants and I’ll show you.”

Leonard clenches his jaw as his pants hit the floor. Ray kneels before him at the foot of their bed and spreads his legs. “Lilith,” Leonard watches Ray grin before he presses his open mouth against his hipbone, “please.”

“Okay,” Lilith swallows thickly, “you have my permission to touch me again.”

Leonard clenches his jaw when Ray fists one hand around his dick and strokes his thumb over the head. “Why is this still on, hmm?” he tugs at the strap of her balconette bra with one hand and starts undoing its clasp with the other.

Lilith shrugs with one shoulder. “I didn’t want my wobbly bits flopping around when you were eating me out earlier,” she explains.

“I like your wobbly bits,” Ray grins wider, then licks one long stroke up Leonard’s dick from root to tip and swirls his tongue over the head.

Leonard groans again before he pushes her bra up out of his way and palms her breasts. “I love how soft you are,” he flicks his thumbs over her nipples.

Ray chooses that moment to take Leonard into his mouth until the edge of his nose brushes against the tips of his pubic hair. For a while he stops thinking about things that aren’t ignoring the gag reflex fluttering at the back of his throat or the sounds Leonard makes when he slowly loses control. Lilith watches him over her shoulder as Leonard plays with her breasts. Ray moves his tongue gently from side to side once, twice, thrice and _sucks_. Leonard makes a strangled noise low in his throat and buries his face between her breasts when he comes.

When he feels capable of articulating, Leonard says: “You’ve gotten very good at that.”

“You taught me well,” Ray wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and licks the corner of his lips. “You both did. Lil,” his eyebrows furrow when he focuses on her. “You revoked physical contact. What really happened while I was gone?”

Lilith sighs. “I showed Barry why going back in time and preventing Len from kidnapping me was a bad idea,” she clenches her thighs together because the aftershocks of her orgasm are still tingling under her skin.

“What,” Leonard growls and pulls her down so they’re both laying on their sides with her back pressed against his chest. One of his hands splays over her stomach as his left leg slips between her calves.

“I talked him out of it,” Lilith covers his hand on her belly with hers and turns her head to look at him over her shoulder, “calm down.” Ray takes his pants off before he crawls into bed with them and settles on his side with his knee between her legs. “Barry went to Saints and Sinners. Prism was there, whammy ensued,” Lilith puts her other hand on his shoulder and hooks her left leg around his waist to pull him closer. “Len threatened to take my powers away.”

“What?” Ray gives Leonard a look that says _we’re going to have our very own talk about how there is not enough nope in the world for that later_.

“Yup.” Lilith sighs because she’s so not here for that she’d rather be on a pandimensional satellite floating outside time and space. “Caitlin and Cisco brought me a device that cured the whammy,” she moves her hips against his so the underside of his dick presses against her slit. Apparently all of the things Caitlin told her about increased sex drive in the second trimester are true. “I threatened to make Len give me space—it was super effective—and we talked it through.”

Leonard should’ve realized Lilith was afraid when she used his weakness to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. Which is exactly what he would’ve done if it had gone the other way—the difference is that he doesn’t mind being screwed into submission. “Then she sat on my face,” he grins. “That’s why she’s soaked. You’re welcome.”

“Thank you.” Ray touches her face and his fingers curl against the nape of her neck as he slides inside her. Leonard smooths the hand on her stomach between her legs to find her clit again. It’s sweet and slow until Ray comes with a stuttering moan and pulls out, his dick slick and soft against her thigh.

Leonard uses his hands to change the angle of her hips so he can take her from behind. Ray rolls her nipples between his fingers as their legs tangle together. Lilith curls her fingers into Ray’s hair and clenches around Leonard as he hisses a low _yes_ into her ear. Ray stops playing with her breasts and squishes them all closer together so he can slip one finger into Leonard’s ass. When he comes Leonard leaves a third mark between her neck and shoulder before he pulls out, but he doesn’t stop circling his fingers over her clit until she screams for him again.

When her orgasm ebbs, she feels almost filthy with so much inside her. Lilith reminds herself of three things: One, sex is always messy if you do it right. Two, she can’t get more pregnant than she already is. Three, the hilariously aghast look on both their faces when she suggested they keep using condoms anyway to avoid this malarkey.

“Okay,” Lilith eventually attempts to untangle herself from between them, “let me get up.”

“No,” Leonard refuses. Ray makes a mournful noise in protest of the idea.

“I am a hot mess,” Lilith retorts, “and I have to pee.”

Ray groans when he flops onto his back. Leonard takes his hands off her with a sigh.

“I’m going to take a shower because I’m covered in sweat and other bodily fluids,” she yawns through the word _bodily_ , “please strip the duvet because we never actually made it between the sheets.” With that, she hobbles into their bathroom.

After he puts on a pair of pajama pants, it takes approximately forty-seven seconds for Ray to fall asleep on top of the rumpled sheets. Leonard strips the duvet and gets the extra blankets out of the closet before he tucks Ray in and gets under the covers himself. Lilith is wearing clean panties and a camisole when she crawls back into bed, careful not to wake either of them.

She lies awake for a while just listening to them breathe. She sees a race of beings called Monitors going extinct. She sees another version of herself, disempowered but alive and with new eyes. She sees the crisis bleeding into alternate dimensions and remaking those worlds. She sees her teenage son kissing a girl with dark pink hair. She sees that hers is the only earth capable of breeding new worlds.

She falls asleep between them before the sun comes up. She doesn’t remember her dreams.

* * *

Thanksgiving at Joe’s is not, in hindsight, nearly as much of a disaster as it could’ve been. Joe’s actual family—that is, Iris, Eddie, Rudy, Mary, Wally, Lola, Edie, and Inez; Barry and Henry are the exceptions that prove the rule—aren’t present because they’re spending Thanksgiving with their in-laws so they can all spend the holiday with Joe next year. Iris spent Thanksgiving with Joe and Barry every year before she married Eddie; this is the first Thanksgiving he’s had without her, and he wishes it were an end instead of a beginning. Joe doesn’t actually know how to cook a turkey. It’s something Nadine did until she died when Iris was seven, then Nora took over until she died when Barry was ten, and his Thanksgiving turkeys have been store-bought and pre-cooked ever since.

“Have you bought a turkey?” Lilith asks a week before the holiday, “because you’re having eleven people over, so you’ll need at least a twenty pound turkey. Which takes five days to thaw.”

“I usually get a pre-cooked turkey at the store,” Joe informs her.

“How about no,” Lilith deadpans, “my mom and I are cooking the turkey. Grams taught us. Maybe get a twenty-five pounder? Mick probably eats a lot.”

“Mick Rory?” Joe says incredulously. “I don’t want him in my house, Lil.”

“Well,” Lilith shrugs, “you vetoed having dinner at our place, so.”

“Snart can’t invite his partners in crime to Thanksgiving,” Joe protests.

Lilith snorts. “Len wanted to invite Mark and Julie too,” she informs him, “but I vetoed that because you shot Mark’s brother twice in the chest.”

“Clyde Mardon was trying to kill Barry,” Joe raises his voice.

“Len’s dad was going to make Len watch him shoot me in the head,” Lilith says flatly, “we’re all capable of murder under the right circumstances.”

“Snart kills in cold blood,” Joe says, “I shot Clyde Mardon to protect my son.”

“If you were forced to make a choice between me and someone who was trying to hurt me, who would you choose?” Lilith retorts.

Joe looks at her belly. “I’d choose you in a heartbeat,” he says softly. “I might not agree with some choices you’ve made, but you’re just as much my kid as Barry is.” What he doesn’t say is that he feels the same way about Cisco, Caitlin, Ronnie, Felicity, and even Ray. It might’ve rendered Barry comatose for the worst ten months of his life, but the particle accelerator explosion gave Joe more family than he knows what to do with and he wouldn’t change that for the world.

“It’s choices that matter,” Lilith says. “Len killed his father because the dude was an abusive piece of human garbage.” What she doesn’t say is that Leonard has also killed people just because he can. Which she doesn’t condone at all, but there is a difference between killing somebody because they got in your way and killing somebody who threatened someone you love. “Mick has made bad choices too. I get that it’s hard to go from the ‘cop equals good, criminal equals bad’ mindset you need to do your job, but pretend we’re all just people for this one night.”

“I’ll try,” Joe says reluctantly, “can I arrest Heatwave after dinner?”

“Okay,” Lilith shrugs with one shoulder, “if you want him to set your house on fire. I explicitly forbade superweapons, but he’s got at least one incendiary device on him at all times.”

So, the eleven people attending Thanksgiving are: Joe, who is not looking forward to hosting a dinner party full of criminals. Henry, whom Joe is kind of, sort of dating. Barry, who gets his own twenty-five pound turkey because his metabolism is ridiculous. Ray, who has now read at least five parenting books and is going to discuss all of them with enough enthusiasm to exhaust everyone. Lilith, who put herself in charge of the mashed potatoes to make sure nobody puts bacon in them. Addie, who is cooking the turkey. Addie’s plus one, who is making the stuffing. Cisco, who takes Lisa to meet his parents beforehand and is appalled when she makes a spectacular first impression. Lisa, whose smile is sharper with something she refuses to say out loud. Leonard, who is still inappropriately pleased with himself for killing his father; and Mick, who hasn’t had Thanksgiving dinner since the farm he grew up on burned to the ground. Felicity was invited, but Donna Smoak is in town with forebodingly vague “big news” to share, so she’s having Thanksgiving with her mom. Ronnie and Caitlin are having Thanksgiving with his father, at which they’ll apparently meet the woman he’s been dating. Spoilers: Ronnie’s dad is dating Felicity’s mom.

Cisco brings Lisa with him when he makes an obligatory appearance at Thanksgiving with his family—she keeps one hand on him the whole time, her palm curving over the crook of his elbow, their fingers intertwined on top of the table, her nails pressing deliciously into his inner thigh through his jeans under the table—before they end up at the West-Allen house.

Henry corners Leonard before dinner and says: “son, we need to talk about your life choices.”

Barry makes an undignified noise when his father calls Leonard _son_. Ray almost chokes on his own laughter at the expression on both of their faces: Barry as a study in broadcasting a wordless _oh hell no_ —eyes narrowed, nose scrunched, mouth gaping open, tongue curling against his teeth—and Leonard telegraphing equal parts low-key interest and _conceal, don’t feel_.

“I met your father in Iron Heights,” Henry says, “and he was an asshole.”

“That’s true.” Leonard tilts his head in consideration. It’s less predatory than Ray is used to. It’s still sexy as hell, because he recognizes the expression that Leonard only wears for people he respects.

“I didn’t know him particularly well,” Henry continues, “but I did notice he had a tendency to blame other people for the consequences of his own actions. Which,” he glances at Barry, “I understand is something you inherited from him.”

Leonard knows Henry means that one time he gave a villain monologue that ended with _this is on you, Barry_. With a shrug, he says: “Barry should have known better than to trust me.”

Barry scoffs. “I was desperate,” he says, “I definitely knew better, but I didn’t have a choice, so I chose the lesser of two evils.”

“Len isn’t evil,” Ray protests.

“Thank you,” Leonard says smugly.

“Which doesn’t mean he’s not a murderer or a manipulative jerk,” Ray clarifies.

Leonard smirks like insults are the new flirting. “I love you, too.”

Cisco and Lisa arrive at that inopportune moment. Ray moves his arm from over the back of the couch to curl his fingers against the nape of Leonard’s neck, his nails scraping through his hair. Henry gives Joe a significant look and tables the conversation. Barry sighs and flops back in his chair as if to say _this has been sufficiently awkward_.

“Hey, guys.” Cisco frowns at the tension.

“Hey, sis.” Leonard smiles at Lisa.

When she smiles back, it’s chock-full of schadenfreude. “Hey, Lenny.”

Lisa baked two pies, one apple and one blackberry. When she goes to put them in the kitchen, Lilith drafts her into cranberry duty. When she refuses a glass of red wine, Lilith takes one look at her and deduces: “You’re pregnant.”

Lisa neither confirms nor denies it, but her silence is significantly loud.

“Okay,” Lilith sighs as she mashes potatoes, “you’re having twins, by the way. I’m guessing you haven’t told Cisco.”

“I haven’t,” Lisa huffs and flips her hair over her shoulder in a vain attempt to obscure how freaked out she is by the possibility of parenthood. “I don’t even know if I’m keeping it.”

Lisa refuses to say _them_ because _them_ belies personhood and whatever is growing inside her isn’t a person—or people—yet.

“Okay,” Lilith stops mashing potatoes and puts the bowl on the counter, “do you want to talk to Len about this?”

“I don’t know,” Lisa forces herself to look at Lilith because looking down is showing weakness and she’s not weak, not even for this. Some vicious part of Lisa is glad Leonard left Lilith the same way he left her before the permanent threesome became a thing. It took her a while to realize that Leonard falling in love for the first time didn’t mean he was going to stop loving her. Lisa didn’t expect to like Lilith, but at some point during those six months when her brother was gone, she started thinking of her as family.

Lilith realizes how terrified Lisa is when her voice actually breaks on the word _know_. Lisa carries herself like she’s unrivaled and unruffled. It’s telling that she’s saying any of this to Lilith out loud because the Snart siblings aren’t as terrible at feelings as they used to be; but they’re never going to be good at making themselves vulnerable, not even for the people they love. “I’m terrified of being a mom,” Lilith confesses. “I told Len and Ray I wasn’t ready and they both promised to support my decision,” she yawns through the word _both_ , “even if I chose to have an abortion. Which I can’t do.”

Lisa eyes the curve of her belly. Lilith is eighteen weeks now, but she was chubby enough when she wasn’t pregnant that she’s only just starting to show. Lisa’s own stomach is flat and being thin doesn’t feel like as much of a victory as it did once upon a time. “Why not?” she asks.

Lilith shrugs. “I knew who my son was going to be before he existed,” she explains, “and I want him to be born even though I’m terrified. I have no idea what I want to do with my life and I’m going to be a mom before I figure it out,” she swallows thickly because this is something she hasn’t articulated to either of her men, “I’m also not looking forward to that awkward moment when people are going to stop seeing me as a person and start seeing me as an incubator or a vessel for new life or some shit. I’m not here for people assuming they can touch my stomach without permission just because I’m pregnant.”

“Yeah,” Lisa giggles and it sounds like glass shattering, “screw that.” Then, the harsh edges of her smile fade into something hesitant and hopeful before she asks: “can you show me the twins?”

“Yup,” Lilith holds out her left hand for the taking. Lisa presses their palms together and interlaces their fingers.

She sees a girl with Cisco’s soft dark hair and a boy with her harsh blue eyes. She sees them cause an earthquake in the middle of Main Street that swallows a monster whole. She sees her brother teaching her kids how to pick locks and shoot to kill. She sees herself in a gold dress watching Cisco dance with their daughter at her quinceañera.

“What are their names?” Lisa wants to know.

“Archie,” Lilith says, “which is short for Archimedes, and Leslie.”

Archimedes, because _give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth_. Lisa exhales a raucous laugh because she fell in love with a nerd and she has no one to blame but herself. “I’m having twins,” she says in a soft voice that refuses to break.

Lilith pops the tab on a canister of whipped cream. “You can’t drink,” she shakes the canister before she offers it to Lisa, “but junk food is not only allowed, it’s highly recommended.”

Lisa sprays it onto her fingertip instead of directly in her mouth because she’s classy like that. Lilith turns when another woman enters the kitchen and kisses her mother on the lips in greeting. Lisa raises her eyebrows as if to say _didn’t your dad just die?_ Lilith shrugs with one shoulder because her parents never got divorced, but they stopped living together after she tore her ACL and they had an open marriage before their separation. Addie has been seeing this woman for over a year.

“Hello, Lilith.” Addie’s plus one smiles at her.

“Hi.” Lilith acknowledges her with a nod, then starts mashing the potatoes again.

Addie’s plus one turns to Lisa. “Hello,” she holds her hand out for the shaking. “I’m Dinah Lance.”


	6. Keep Making Trouble Until You Find What You Love

**It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.**

Eckhart Tolle, _A New Earth_

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
**Part 5**  
Keep Making Trouble Until You Find What You Love

* * *

**December 2016**

* * *

Lisa and Cisco have a Talk with a capital T about marriage after she tells him they’re having twins. Lisa makes the compelling argument that her brother gave her a blank slate, so if she and Cisco ever decided to get married he would technically be tying the knot with an alias. Sydney Bristow jokes aside, if he can’t be married to her then Cisco doesn’t want to be married at all. Actually, he likes the idea of living in sin; his family is going to hate it and he cannot wait.

“So what are my hypothetical options?” Cisco asks eagerly. “How many aliases do you have?”

“I have as many as I need,” Lisa smiles at her boyfriend like she wants to make him work for it. “Lenny and I were planning on retiring in Panama and we created specific aliases for that,” she explains, “but we’ve never used them so they wouldn’t be compromised before we pulled our last job. Obviously that’s not going to happen now unless my brother can persuade Lil and Ray to relocate,” her smile turns wicked, “I know I can persuade you.”

Cisco grins at her. “Panama sounds pretty damn good to me.”

Eventually she tells him what her default alias is and explains why. Even though she knows he’ll do something her brother will hate with that information. Later that week at S. T. A. R. Labs, Cisco gives Leonard something that looks like a sparkling diamond and scuttles away before it explodes and glitter flies everywhere.

“Oh my god,” Lilith intones from her swivel chair. Which is conveniently outside the blast radius of silver and gold sparkles. “Lisa, you told him?”

“Wait,” Cisco raises both hands palm out as if to say _hold up_ , “you knew?” Then he smacks one palm against his forehead because of course she knew, she’s Omen. “How could you not tell me this?” he asks in mock outrage.

“I regret nothing,” Lilith deadpans, “sorry not sorry.”

“Why would you do this?” Leonard says flatly.

Cisco grins and drops the truth bomb: “Because you’re Edward Cullen.”

Leonard glowers at Lisa, but it’s impossible to be intimidating while covered in glitter. “Why didn’t you warn me?” he asks Lilith.

“I didn’t see it coming,” Lilith shrugs.

Leonard doesn’t need to be precognitive to know she wouldn’t have warned him even if she did see this coming because she snaps a commemorative picture of him with her phone before she bursts out laughing all over again. “Delete that,” he says in a deceptively calm voice.

“How about no.” Lilith sends it to Ray, who is in Starling City for the week because he put half of his net worth toward renewal projects in the Glades and moving to Central City didn’t change how involved he is with making sure the streets where Anna died are safe for other people in the future. Ray replies with a series of emojis and a picture of Oliver Queen eating a cheeseburger.

“What is happening right now?” Felicity wants to know.

“Lenny created the alias Edward Cullen when he was nineteen,” Lisa begins. “Which was seven years before _Twilight_ was published, five years before it was written. Edward was our grandfather’s name.”

Cisco grins so hard it probably hurts before he shouts, “and Peter Cullen is the voice of Optimus Prime!”

“Peter Cullen was also the voice Red Skull on _Spider-Man_.” Leonard feels the need to clarify that he did not create his first alias in homage to the leader of the Autobots. “I watched reruns when I was a kid.”

“Len met Stephenie Meyer in 2003,” Lilith explains, “when he went to steal a thing from the museum in Cave Creek, Arizona.”

“St. John’s polychrome,” Leonard reminds her, “for a collector.” What he doesn’t say is that he gave the payout from that job to their grandfather so Lisa could have figure skating lessons and equipment, like most of the jobs he pulled before she finished high school and turned to a life of crime. “I met her when I was casing the museum,” he snorts, “the security was a joke. I barely talked to her, but I did introduce myself.”

“As Edward Cullen,” Felicity says incredulously.

Leonard nods and glitter puffs out from under the collar of his jacket.

Lilith scoots forward in her chair, swinging her legs for momentum. “What’s weird,” she yawns through the word _weird_ , “is that Len looks nothing like Edward Cullen does in the books.” Which is true. Leonard isn’t pale or a redhead and his eyes are blue or sometimes grey, not inhuman colors like amber or black or ochre.

“Yeah,” Cisco reluctantly capitulates because Leonard bears no resemblance to Robert Pattinson, “but there’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

“Hey, Lil.” Lisa folds her arms over the back of her chair and leans in like Leonard does sometimes to discombobulate Lilith. “Does my brother dazzle you?”

Lilith slumps over the table as her whole body shakes with laughter. “Please,” she says, “text Ray that.”

“Has he read _Twilight_?” Felicity wants to know, because she dated Ray for months but they never talked about the cultural phenomenon of mainstreaming paranormal romance novels. Actually, they still talk about the same topics that always came up when they were dating. Ray is one of the only people she can geek out with about science and technology and coding and whatnot without worrying that he doesn’t get why she’s so passionate about those things. At the end of the day, he’s one of her best friends.

“Yup,” Lilith elongates the vowel sound. “Ray overheard me and Caitlin when we were talking about the scientific inaccuracies of Meyerpires one time and he wanted to be able to have an informed discussion with me about the series so he read them all. What a dork,” she rolls her eyes, but her smile is soft and so in love that her sarcasm fails epically. “Len,” she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth to keep herself from laughing again because he’s still festooned with glitter and glowering, “there are decontamination showers in the medical center on Level 200.”

Leonard is so done he doesn’t even ask her to join him in the shower before he gets in the elevator, gold and silver glitter floating through the air behind him.

* * *

Ray has returned to Starling City once a month or so since he moved to Central City so he can oversee the renewal projects he funded in the Glades. Oliver approaches him when he decides to rebuild his company from the wreckage of what was Queen Consolidated before it was Palmer Technologies and they start having lunch whenever Ray is in town. Thea is the one who ends up running Queen Incorporated because she has more business savvy in her pinkie than Oliver has in his entire body.

At some point, Oliver realizes he actually likes Ray. There are times when he reminds him of Felicity so much it hurts. For instance, they both have a way of making him feel comfortable with cheerful babble. Which is something he didn’t know he was missing until it was gone.

“How is she?” he finally asks, nearly a year after the girl in question left him and his city. There is a small part of him that’s awfully glad she didn’t get back together with Ray. 

“Good,” Ray smiles, “she’s happy, with Barry.”

“Good.” Oliver smiles back, faking it until he makes it. Felicity deserves to be happy. It’s not her fault that she’s happy with someone else. It’s his. Barry is something Oliver can never be; not innocent, after everything he’s been through, but the Flash embodies hope for a brighter future in a way the Arrow—Green Arrow, now—can’t, and the future is a thing he’s been thinking a lot about lately. Without thinking, he blurts: “I have an eight-year-old son.”

“I know,” Ray says. “I’ve met him.”

“How?” Oliver says in a voice saturated with so much vulnerability it makes Ray want to hug him or something, even though he knows that wouldn’t end well.

“Lil is friends with Sandra,” Ray explains, “and Connor takes ballet with Addie, Lil’s mom.”

Oliver blinks. He didn’t see that coming. “Does he wear tights?”

“Yeah,” Ray grins, “but tights are cool. Just ask Robin Hood.”

Oliver groans internally.

Ray invites him and his team to a dinner party he wants to throw on Christmas Eve because Sandra and Connor will be there. Which is how Oliver ends up taking the train to Central City with Thea, Laurel, Cindy, Sara, Nyssa, Diggle, Lyla, Sadie, Kendra and Don two days before Christmas. Barry and Felicity are waiting for them at the station. Felicity is holding a green poster board with Team Arrow written on it in black ink.

“I know there are rental cars waiting outside to drive you to your hotel,” she says, “but I wanted to welcome you back personally. Which is why I got Barry to speed me here,” she hugs two-year-old Sadie first, then Diggle, then Lyla, then Sara, then Laurel, then Thea, and finally Oliver. Felicity doesn’t know Cindy, Don, or Kendra well enough to embrace them and she doesn’t want to spook Nyssa. Thea has to let go of Cindy’s hand to hug back. Felicity notices, but doesn’t mention it. “I missed you guys,” she says.

“Well,” Sara says softly, “you can always come back.”

“I’ll try to visit more often.” Diggle gives her a significant look which blatantly says _you haven’t visited at all_. “Okay! I’ll actually visit instead of making vague excuses about why I can’t,” her laughter is awkward with a side of sheepish, “but I don’t want to go back.” Felicity looks at Oliver. Maybe there is another world in which things magically worked out between them, but this isn’t that world and she wouldn’t want it any other way. “Central City is my home now.”

* * *

Lilith sighs and flops onto the couch next to Leonard as the first of many cars pulls into their driveway. “I’d like to state, for the record, that I don’t have the spoons for this,” she yawns through the word _spoons_ , “being pregnant is kicking my ass.”

Leonard puts one hand on the back of her neck and strokes his thumb over the tattoo behind her right ear. “You’re twenty-two weeks now,” he says, “eighteen weeks to go.”

Leonard has been treating her pregnancy like it’s a plan he’s trying to pull off without a hitch. Which probably has a lot to do with the last pregnant woman he loved abandoning him and his baby sister. Ray, meanwhile, has been treating her pregnancy like a research project: reading every book he can find, doing independent research on the internet, regretting his decision to do independent research on the internet, inventing things rendered superfluous by pre-existing things when he hasn’t gotten enough sleep, and designing little toys Isaac won’t be able to play with until he’s a few years old. Lilith has a hunch they’re going to be a great dads, but there’s a messed up part of her that wishes Ray would get overwhelmed or Leonard might want out so she’d have something to focus on besides her own anxiety.

At that, she groans and wishes paroxetine was safe to take while pregnant. Only she doesn’t want Isaac to go through withdrawal after he’s born and a two percent chance of heart defects felt like too much of a risk after her dad’s heart gave out. “I blame you,” she informs Ray.

Ray is wearing a Christmas sweater, bright red chenille festooned with tiny white reindeer. At least it doesn’t light up. “It takes two,” he says gently. Ray knows she isn’t really mad at him—pregnancy is stressful and anticipating a houseful of people isn’t helping her mood.

Leonard uses the hand on her neck to pull her closer until his other hand touches her face; he kisses her temple, her jaw, the corner of her lips, then her mouth. Lilith kisses back softly to let him know his plan to calm her down is working. “Okay,” she breaks the kiss and exhales a soft _woo_. “How about we never tell Isaac he was conceived when one of his fathers was stuck in a pocket dimension through the looking glass and his other parents coped by fulfilling the ultimate cliché of being neither awake nor sober enough to remember to use a condom.”

Ray doesn’t point out that if their son really wants to know whatever secrets they’re keeping from him, he just has to read their minds. Instead he sits next to Lilith, stretching his left arm over the back of the couch so his fingers map the familiar slope of Leonard’s shoulder. Ray puts his other hand on her belly and kisses her mouth once, sweetly. Lilith nuzzles his nose with hers just before someone knocks on their door.

 _By the pricking of my thumbs_ , she thinks as Ray goes to answer the door. _Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks_. “Okay,” Lilith uses her cane to get back on her feet. “I need to check on the scalloped potatoes,” she yawns through the word _potatoes_. “Also, I don’t trust Ray with the ham. I love him, but his D-List X-Men superpower is the ability to ruin all food that’s not breakfast food.”

Leonard follows her into the kitchen and starts making a plan to get her to use her chair without pissing her off. The extra weight from her pregnancy is throwing off her balance. “What’s my D-List X-Men superpower?” he asks.

“Wearing a down jacket all summer and somehow not sweating like a pig while you do it,” Lilith deadpans as she tucks the oven mitts under her arm and peers inside the oven.

Leonard steals the oven mitts out from under her arm so he can take the scalloped potatoes out of the oven and put them on the countertop to cool. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t know,” Lilith shrugs and grins knowingly at him before she says: “getting kidnapped, probably.”

Leonard frowns as guilt creeps into his gut like overgrown roots gnarling out of the earth. “I’m sorry,” he says softly.

“Don’t be,” Lilith reaches for him with the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. When she touches his face, the stubble on his cheek rasps against her palm. “I’m not.”

“Wow,” comes a familiar voice from the archway that leads into the kitchen, “I didn’t believe it when I heard you were dating the criminal who ransomed you before we met. I told my team you knew better.”

Don Hall is tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, solidly built with a thick waist and broad shoulders bared by the neckline of her periwinkle blue dress. Leonard narrows his eyes and looks her over. Her fingernails are thicker than normal and tinged pale pink; not from a manicure, but as a manifestation of her powers. Her hair has white feathers in it and there are fresh red wounds like pinpricks on her skin where she must’ve plucked others. Her neck is warped by three ugly scars, a memory of talons ripping her throat out. Her gaze is sharp as she meets his eyes and raises one pale eyebrow. Kendra stands beside Don with her arms folded and her shoulders curved inward; not quite hunched, but accustomed to spreading the wings she has folded over her back.

Lilith rolls her eyes and says: “missed you too, Donna Georgia.”

Don grins and retorts: “whatever, Lilith Sibylla.”

This is the first person Lilith fell in love with. The one who helped her figure out how she likes to be touched. The one who made her feel beautiful when she thought she was broken. The one who put herself between Lilith and her brother without hesitation even though Lilith broke her heart three years before. Leonard smooths one hand over her waist and curls his fingers into the flesh of her hip, a nonverbal _mine_. Lilith looks up at him as if to say _Really?_ but she doesn’t tell him to take his hand off her or move out of his reach so he calls it a win.

“I’d hug you,” Don says, “but you’re huge. I don’t think my arms can go around you.”

Lilith makes an indignant noise in her throat. “Well,” she snarks back, “I don’t need to fit in your arms. Not anymore.”

 _You broke up with me and cut all ties between us three and a half years ago. You have no right to judge my romantic choices or tease me about being pregnant._ _You don’t know me anymore_ goes unspoken, but not unheard.

“Wow,” Don eyes the ring on her finger, “you’ve changed.”

“What,” Lilith bites down on the _t_ sound, “because I’m engaged?”

“No,” Don shakes her head slowly, “because you’re finally willing to fight for something.”

 _You didn’t fight for us_ goes unspoken, but not unheard.

Lilith had five months between finding the ring in Ray’s sock drawer and him proposing to her to think about why she wasn’t ready for marriage before. Apparently it has everything to do with her parents: How her dad cheated on her mom with his grad students like he wanted to star in a Woody Allen movie. How her mom asked for an open marriage even though she wanted the antithesis of that. How she could tell her dad was hurting her mom even when she was too young to understand what was going on. How she tried to make her mom happy because that was supposed to be his job, but he wasn’t doing it, so she worked hard to be a good dancer before she fell in love with ballet herself. How she grew up more or less in isolation with her parents until she joined the Central City Ballet Company when she was sixteen, so she internalized that marriage was essentially people making each other unhappy. Lilith wants to retort that Don is the one who broke up with her, that neither she nor Don were ready for marriage, that it wasn’t even legal for two girls to get married in Missouri in 2013, but none of that matters now because they might’ve broken each other’s hearts but neither she nor Don are heartbroken anymore.

“Maybe I should’ve fought for you,” Lilith sighs and squares her shoulders. “But aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

“Well,” Kendra breaks the heavy silence that ensues, “I sure as hell am.”

Leonard hums in agreement. Lilith buries her face against his chest and laughs against his sternum, her fingers clutching the fabric of his black dress shirt over his heart. Ray is talking to Oliver in the great room, but he keeps looking at them in the kitchen. Lilith has a newspaper clipping of her and Don she cut out of the _Central City Citizen_ , in which Don is leaning over the back of her chair to kiss her upside-down in homage to Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. It was taken at a Pride event held on campus at Hudson over the summer. Lilith has the blue, purple, and pink bi flag painted under her left eye. Don has the standard rainbow covering her right shoulder, her fair hair streaked with the same colors. Patty is in the background decked out in her _Scientists Do It Better_ t-shirt tucked into black dress pants held up with rainbow suspenders. Fiona stands beside her in a designer sundress she got to keep after a modeling job, her high ponytail festooned with pastel silk ribbons in pink, yellow, and blue. It was the first and only time Lilith consented to being photographed and quoted after she sustained her injuries. Ray doesn’t know whether he envies their boyfriend or not. Leonard has never been heartbroken, but he also had to go through something most people experience as teenagers or twentysomethings in his mid-thirties, and he had no idea what to do with himself or his feelings. Ray knows how it feels to lose your first love, so he’s not jealous like Leonard is right now.

“Is this weird for you?” Oliver wants to know. “Having your fiancée’s ex-girlfriend here?”

Ray presses his lips together as he thinks it over. “If this is going to be weird for anyone, it’s you,” he points out. “Laurel was your first serious girlfriend, you fell for Sara and then you were in love with Felicity, you got Sandra pregnant, and you were married to Nyssa,” his eyebrows furrow as a simultaneously horrible and hilarious possibility occurs to him. “Are you still married to Nyssa?” he wonders. “I know it was a freaky Nanda Parbat arranged marriage that probably isn’t legal here, but did you ever actually get divorced? Or have it annulled? Or however you undo a freaky Nanda Parbat arranged marriage?”

“I had it annulled,” Nyssa says, “before I brought Sara back from the dead and left the League in the hands of Merlyn. Dusan has since returned and claimed the title of Heir to the Demon.”

Sara grins ruefully. Nyssa’s older brother is, to put it mildly, not her favorite person. “How does Talia feel about that?” she wants to know.

Nyssa shrugs birdlike with her neck curving over her shoulder. “Talia is in Gotham,” she says, “with the caped crusader, last I heard.”

Patty, Fiona, and Felicia arrive next. Felicia Kane is Kathy’s eight-year-old stepdaughter, but her mother died when she was only a few months old, so she thinks of Kathy as her mom. Felicia scuttles over to Lilith and breaks the ice forming in the kitchen with a hug. Leonard shifts closer to the counter, making room without taking his hand off her hip.

“Hello, fell creature,” Lilith hugs back as best she can with her belly in the way. “Hi, Pat. Hey, Fi. Where’s Kathy?”

Fiona’s eyes flick from Lilith to Felicia and back again before she shakes her head as if to say _it’s not good news. I’ll tell you later_.

“Daddy’s sick again,” Felicia informs her softly. “Aunt Fi thinks I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not stupid. I know he’s not getting better.”

Nathan Kane is significantly older than Kathy and he has a bad heart; it’s only a matter of time before he suffers a fatal stroke. Lilith sees his death coming and closes her eyes against the vision even though it doesn’t actually make her stop seeing things.

“I think this is the first time we’ve all been in the same room since undergrad,” Patty paps Don’s face. “How weird is that?”

Don sighs as tension bleeds out from her shoulders and shudders down her spine before she relaxes. Patty continues squishing her cheeks with her palms until Don grabs her wrists gently and removes her hands from her face. Kendra exhales a huff of laughter and her feathers ruffle when her shoulders quake.

“Wow.” Felicia stops hugging Lilith and tiptoes over to peer at Kendra in awe, “you have _wings_ ,” she whispers, “can I touch them?”

Kendra sighs like it’s a question people ask a lot when she doesn’t bother to hide them with a jacket. “Okay,” she says.

Felicia giggles to herself as she runs her fingers carefully through the feathers. Fiona gives Kendra her best smile, the one that got her a multimillion dollar modeling contract. Don snorts when Kendra reddens because her skin isn’t dark enough to make a flush go unnoticed, especially not to someone who knows how to make her blush harder.

Barry offers to run her to the party, but Felicity straight up refuses because whenever Barry speeds anywhere near her the blowback messes up her hair. Felicity brings her menorah with her because Christmas Eve is also the last day of Hanukkah and carefully places it near one end of the long mahogany table. Barry watches her kindle the lights and recites the two blessings with her. Felicity leaves the lights to burn out and makes her way through the great room. There is a ridiculously large, perfect tree in one corner. Sadie is laying on the floor with her bare feet sticking out from beneath the branches. Diggle and Lyla have deliberately positioned themselves so they can keep an eye on her. Thea and Cindy have somehow managed to fit both of their bodies into an overstuffed armchair made to hold one person; when Kendra leaves the kitchen, she perches on the arm of the chair next to them. Nyssa, Sara, Laurel, Oliver, Ray, Eddie, Iris, Caitlin, and Ronnie are sitting on Lilith’s giant couch listening to Iris, Laurel, and Sara swap stories about growing up with cop dads. Lisa and Cisco have snuck off somewhere. Mick is watching Ronnie like a hawk, setting himself up for disappointment; Stein is spending Christmas Eve alone with Clarissa, so spontaneous combustion is off the menu. At least he’s wearing clothes that ostensibly weren’t stolen from a firehouse—his arsonist’s coat is nowhere to be seen. Barry is holding mistletoe over their heads when she looks up; he kisses her and smiles against her mouth before he goes to sit on the couch with their friends.

Don, Patty, and Fiona are still in the kitchen with the overprotective control freak and the pregnant lady who makes the space-time continuum her bitch on the regular. “Stop hovering,” Lilith orders as she rolls a spoonful of peanut butter cookie dough in sugar.

“Stop being too stubborn to use your chair,” Leonard says flatly as she sets the ball of dough on a nonstick cookie sheet, “or I’ll let Cisco turn it into a hovercraft.”

“I don’t respond well to threats,” Lilith retorts, “you know this.”

Leonard smirks. “Last time I threatened you, you sat on my face. I think that ended very well for everyone.”

Don stops removing tinfoil from chocolate kisses to choke on her own guffaw. “Wow,” she says, “that’s an excellent response to threats, Lil.”

Leonard hums in agreement. Lilith blushes and scoops another spoonful of cookie dough out of the mixing bowl. Patty puts the beaters she licked in an unclean measuring cup, the metal clinking against the glass.

Fiona looks over her shoulder and notices her niece is conspicuously absent. “Where’s Felicia?” she wants to know.

Lilith closes her eyes and says: “the fell creature is in my reading room. I didn’t need to be precognitive to know that.”

Felicity chooses that moment to enter the kitchen and goes straight for the freezer to extricate the grated potatoes she left there a few days ago.

“I put them in the sink to defrost this afternoon,” Lilith informs her.

“Thank you,” Felicity smiles at her. “How’s your close encounter of the ex kind going?”

Lilith turns and looks at Don, who is foiling Patty’s attempts to consume raw cookie dough. “Better than expected,” she shrugs. “How’s yours?”

Felicity rustles up a frying pan. “Is there a universe where Oliver and I end up together?” she wants to know. It’s not that she wants to be with Oliver in this version of reality, not anymore. It’s just that part of her feels like she left him for herself, and she feels bad about that sometimes. Oliver isn’t her responsibility, and she knows she doesn’t owe him anything, but making a conscious decision to move on with your life doesn’t mean you stop loving someone.

“Yup,” Lilith starts pressing chocolate kisses into the balls of cookie dough on the trays, “in one world you literally ride off into the sunset with him. I’m not alive in that reality, so I’m not a fan. Also half of Central City is destroyed by a quantum singularity and Eddie is dead.”

“Cool,” Patty still can’t get over the fact that her best friend is basically a physical manifestation of the many-worlds interpretation.

“I think you mean awful.” Felicity puts a carton of eggs on the counter before she changes the subject. “Where’s your flour?”

Felicity is frying potato pancakes in olive oil when Sandra and Connor are fashionably late. Oliver takes Sandra aside by the table to ask how exactly this is going to work and the next thing he knows, she’s throwing Felicity’s menorah at Mick’s face.

Lilith puts her hand on Leonard’s forearm and moves them through space-time into the middle of the great room. “Okay. Here’s how this is going to work,” she doesn’t raise her voice much, but her tone leaves no room for argument. “Mr. Diggle—”

“John,” Diggle interjects, “you can call me John.”

“Okay,” Lilith shifts her weight off her knee as Leonard goes to take care of Mick. “Are you armed, John?”

Diggle nods. “Always.”

“Good,” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “I need you to help Len take Mick outside. I don’t think he’ll get violent, but your two-year-old daughter is under my Christmas tree so you won’t hesitate to put him down if I’m wrong. Ray, go take the ham out of the oven. Barry, get the frozen peas out of the freezer for Mick and make sure Ray doesn’t ruin our main course by dropping it on the floor somewhere between the kitchen and the table. Don, please banish the cookie sheets to the fridge. Felicity, put your latkes on the platter I left next to the oven for you when they’re done. Sandra, you’re coming with me.” With that, she hobbles toward her reading room.

Felicia holds up a huge leatherbound book with _Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs_ embossed in gold on the cover and asks: “can I borrow this?”

“Yup,” Lilith flops into the papasan chair she keeps at home. Which is twice the size of the one she has at S. T. A. R. Labs. “If you go show it to Connor.”

Felicia nods so enthusiastically it discombobulates her for a second before she carries the book carefully on her way out. Sandra sits in the vaguely villainous swivel chair Lilith ordered for Leonard as a birthday gift and squishes her bare toes into the carpet underfoot.

“The hell,” Lilith says.

Sandra exhales a long sigh. “Do you remember what I told you after I got Milo to sign the divorce papers?”

Sandra texted her from Saints and Sinners in the aftermath of a dude bending her over the bathroom sink. “What is up with you having sex in public bathrooms?” Lilith wants to know. Oliver went down on Sandra in a bathroom stall at the 24-hour diner where she used to work before he passed out on the floor and got her to give him her number after she awkwardly flicked water from the sink at his face until he regained consciousness. Apparently that was their meet cute. “I’m not judging, I just don’t understand the appeal.”

“I don’t know,” Sandra groans and twists her fingers together so she has something to do with her hands, “but that’s the dude from the bar. I didn’t want him to say anything in front of Connor, so I panicked.”

Despite her preternatural awareness of every possible outcome in the multiverse, she never saw this coming. “Did he try to set you on fire?” Lilith deadpans.

“No,” Sandra blushes a soft pink as opposed to the splotchy red Lilith has to contend with, “he was rough, but it was really _good_ , you know?”

Lilith holds her hands up in mock surrender. “I don’t want to know how Mick is during sex,” she says. “If I did, I’d ask Len.”

Sandra gapes, then closes her mouth slowly. It’s not the idea of Mick with another dude that freaks her out. It’s that by the transitive property, she had sex with Leonard, and following that logic, with Lilith.

“I should warn you,” Lilith sighs. “Mick likes pain—giving it and taking it—so what you just did to him is probably going to make him interested in you. I electrocuted him once and he liked it so much he asked me to do it again. I mean, he knows how to take no for an answer, but if he comes on too strong I’ll have Len promise to freeze his dick off.”

Sandra doubles over, her fingers clutching the fabric of her skirt as laughter rumbles through her belly. “Oh my god,” she wheezes around the words.

Lilith exhales a quiet laugh of her own. “I don’t think Len would actually do it,” she clarifies. “Mick is his best friend and bros don’t give bros frostbitten dick, but the threat of literal blue balls should be enough to make him back off if this escalates.”

Sandra laughs a little more before she changes the subject. “I agreed to this because Connor has been asking Santa for a dad since he was three,” she says softly. “I should’ve broken things off with Milo after Connor called him ‘dad’ and Milo yelled at him to never call him that again. Which happened when he was four. Like, who says that to a four-year-old boy? Assholes, that’s who.”

Meanwhile on the back porch, Mick leans against the wooden railing and presses a bag of frozen peas against his head. Leonard grins at him, showing his teeth as he chuckles low in his throat.

Diggle positions himself between Mick and the back door, then looks at Leonard as he reconsiders his preconceived notions about whatever is going on between him, Ray, and Lilith. “I thought you were taking advantage of her,” he says, “because of how young she was when you met.”

Leonard doesn’t have to be precognitive to know who he means or what he’s implying. “Lilith outsmarted me when she was a powerless teenager in a wheelchair. I couldn’t take advantage of her if I wanted to,” he smiles without showing his teeth, “and I don’t want to. I have everything that I want, including Lilith. I don’t need to take anything from her that she won’t give me.”

“Everybody knows who wears the pants,” Mick says through clenched teeth, “and it’s not Snart,” he pauses and groans, “or Palmer, for that matter.”

Leonard notices a pair of stilettoes accompanied by a pair of bright red Converse on the back stairs. “Cisco,” he raises his voice, “what exactly are you doing out here with my sister?”

Cisco appears at the top of the slide, his dark hair full of static. “Please don’t kill me for making out with Lisa in the bouncy castle,” he says.

“You know the rules,” Leonard says flatly. “No sex in the bouncy castle because Ray bought it instead of renting one like a normal person so eventually our kids are going to play in it.”

“Come on, Lenny.” Lisa runs her fingers through Cisco’s hair, “rules were made to be broken.”

“Not this one,” Leonard retorts. “Lilith sleeps in there when Ray and I aren’t here. Unless you want her to see you having sex retroactively, I’d take your hands off him.”

Lisa stops messing up Cisco’s hair and focuses on their partner in crime. “What happened to you, Mick?” she wants to know.

Mick drops the bag of frozen peas onto the railing. “Sandra,” he grins, “she happened.”

Lilith bought Connor a bow and a quiver of shafts with suction cups at the business end instead of arrowheads for his eighth birthday because people who can see the future are into foreshadowing. Sandra is looking for a place to live that isn’t an apartment she got in a divorce settlement with a notorious arms dealer, but for now he can’t practice archery at home. Connor brought it with him to the party because Lilith promised to set up a target for him in the backyard.

After dinner, Oliver asks: “Do you know how to use that thing?”

Connor shakes his head. “I’m not allowed to practice in the house,” he explains, “and my mom won’t let me take lessons until I finish elementary school. It’s okay, though. I really like ballet so I don’t mind waiting to shoot real arrows until I’m older.”

Oliver inclines his head towards the bow. “May I?”

Connor nods and hands it over. Sandra probably doesn’t know enough about archery to realize that the bow itself is a child-sized weapon despite the toy arrows, but Oliver does.

“I know you’re my dad,” Connor says as Oliver draws back the bow even though it’s much too small for him. It takes all the discipline he has to avoid snapping the bowstring. Instead he slowly relaxes his arm so the tension in the string fades out before he lets go.

“How?” Oliver wants to know, his voice raw and vulnerable because he has no idea how to handle this.

Connor gives him a look as if to say, _seriously?_ It’s an expression that has definitely crossed his own face. “Do you think my mom would bring me here and tell me you’re my dad for the first time in front of a bunch of people?” he rolls his eyes, “she told me a couple weeks ago so I could have time to decide whether I wanted to meet you or not. Lil would’ve never let Ray make this happen if she thought I wasn’t okay with it.”

Oliver hasn’t actually met Lilith yet because she was busy in the kitchen when he arrived and she ate dinner in there because she was baking three kinds of cookies to avoid human interaction. “Do you like her?” he wants to know.

Connor actually blushes. Oliver is suddenly overwhelmed by how much he’s missed already. “Sometimes grown-ups treat kids like we don’t understand stuff,” he explains. “Lil doesn’t. I like hanging out with her. Someday she’ll get divorced like mom and Milo and then I’ll marry her.”

Oliver exhales a soft laugh and sits next to his son. “How do you want to do this?” he asks.

Connor pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and gnaws on it before he says: “I don’t want you to take me away from my mom.”

Oliver shakes his head. “Connor, that was never going to happen,” he says firmly. “I meant I could…I could visit you,” he swallows thickly, “we could hang out.”

“Okay,” Connor nods, “will you teach me archery?”

Oliver goes tense as a taut bowstring.

“Lil told me you’re Green Arrow,” Connor explains. “Also she said you’re a human disaster, but the way I see it my dad is basically Robin Hood. How cool is that?”

Oliver stops groaning internally and smiles, his stomach twisting with a strange amalgamation of guilt and pride he’s grown accustomed to. Sandra eventually comes to tell Connor it’s time for them to go home. Oliver doesn’t broach the topic of making visitation an official thing. Sandra gave him and Thea permission to be there on Christmas morning, so he’ll wait until after the holidays are over to get his rights in writing.

Ray is in the kitchen with Leonard and they’re supposed to be doing the dishes, but what they’re actually doing is kissing with the former pressing the latter against the counter when Oliver walks in. Leonard has one hand tangled in Ray’s hair and the other is grabbing his ass.

Oliver clears his throat before he asks: “Where’s the apex of this triangle?”

Ray turns and grins sheepishly at Oliver. “Lil is probably in her reading room,” he says.

Leonard smirks and clarifies: “the room she used to interrogate Sandra earlier.”

“Thanks.” Oliver leaves them to their makeouts and walks through the great room to the corner where the reading room is. In a papasan chair sits a pale, freckly, pregnant redhead with her eyes closed and her hands splayed over her stomach.

Lilith holds up one hand to keep him quiet before he opens his mouth to speak. “I was talking to my son,” she explains after a minute or so ticks by in silence, “but he’s asleep now. I’m teaching him to think in words,” she yawns through the word _think_ , “which is going to be weird because he won’t have the muscles to talk after he’s born, so we’ll have to teach him to vocalize his thoughts without imposing them on people before he starts preschool.”

Oliver sits in the swivel chair Sandra occupied earlier and looks at her. Lilith meets his gaze without flinching and raises her eyebrows like a challenge. Oliver unsettles because he knows she could look right through him if she wanted to. “Do you know my son wants to marry you?” he asks.

Lilith nods, a slow descent of her chin. “I’m pregnant and marrying two men,” she rolls her left ankle and points her toes as the joint pops, “so my dance card is full forever.”

“How does that work?” Oliver wants to know.

“I was homeschooled until college,” Lilith begins, “so I don’t know this firsthand, but apparently when you’re a kid, you think you can only have one best friend.”

“I guess so,” Oliver says. Tommy was unequivocally his best friend at boarding school even though they used to hang out with Laurel and a bunch of other guys. “I never really thought about it, but you’re not wrong.”

“I think when you grow up you realize a best friend is a tier, not a person.” Lilith yawns through the word _tier_ , “because you get different things from different people in your life. Ray makes me want to be a better person because he believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself. Len loves even the darkest parts of me that I don’t like but were necessary for me to survive. I know you were in love with Laurel and Sara and Felicity and your feelings for them overlapped, so you know it’s possible to have romantic feelings for more than one person at the same time.”

“I do.” Oliver wonders how much of what she knows was gleaned from conversations with Felicity and how much she learned from her visions.

“Okay,” Lilith uses her cane to get back on her feet, “my anti-anxiety meds don’t mix with pregnancy and I don’t have the spoons for more human interaction tonight, but: Connor is a great kid,” she hobbles past him through the doorway, “you deserve to know him.”

Oliver swallows thickly. “It can’t be that simple,” he says.

“It’s simple,” Lilith retorts, “not easy. It was good to meet you, Oliver.”

Oliver has smiled more tonight than he has in months. Lilith is the one who set all of this in motion. “It was nice to meet you too, Lilith.”

After their guests are gone and the dishes are done, Ray and Leonard find her upstairs laying on top of the covers with her eyes closed and her headphones on because the music helps quiet how loud her brain can be sometimes. Lilith is wearing her monstrosity of a maternity bra and matching underwear, one hand on top of her belly and the other on the pillow above her head.

“Ray,” Leonard says in a low voice, “take off your clothes and get on your knees.”

“Lil might not have the spoons for sex right now,” Ray says before he pulls his sweater and the t-shirt underneath it over his head.

Leonard shrugs. “If she doesn’t, she’ll say so and we can have sex elsewhere while she falls asleep. It’s not like we’ve never done that before.”

Ray arches his eyebrows and cocks his head in a nonverbal _fair enough_ before he drops his pants. Lilith has the music turned up so loud she doesn’t notice she isn’t alone in their bedroom until Ray hooks his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pulls them down over her thighs.

Leonard sits on their bed to her left and takes her headphones off. “Hi there,” he stops the music and puts her phone on the bedside table before he lies on his side next to her.

“Hi.” Lilith focuses on Ray between her legs, his brown eyes hungry and dark, waiting for permission to eat her out. “Yes,” she says, “please, Ray.”

Ray grins crookedly at her and puts her thighs on his shoulders. When he licks into her, his forehead presses against the curve of her belly. Leonard pins her wrists above her head with one hand. Ray hums low in his throat like she tastes delicious and it goes straight through her. Lilith squirms as Leonard splays his other hand over her belly and kisses the hollow under her jaw before he moves his lips to her neck.

“Len,” she makes a high noise in her throat when Leonard scrapes his teeth over her pulse just as Ray flicks his tongue over her clit and curls two fingers inside her. “Ray, oh my god.”

“No,” Leonard says hoarsely, his breath hot on her neck. “Just us.”

* * *

**January 2017**

* * *

Mick shows up at their house on a day when he knows Leonard and Ray aren’t home. Leonard and Lisa are pulling a job without him, and Ray is overseeing the setup of a new S. T. A. R. Labs facility in Tokyo. At least Mick didn’t break in to test the security system this time.

Lilith is in the kitchen cooking for the week, a pot of soup simmering on the stove and the oven preheating as she cores and slices three apples. “Hi,” she says, “make yourself useful and sauté the onions.”

“What,” Mick says.

Lilith sighs and clarifies: “put the onions I sliced in a saucepan with some olive oil and stir them so they’ll cook evenly until they’re caramelized.” Then, as an afterthought she adds: “don’t burn them.”

“I’m not here to help you in the kitchen,” Mick says as he unhooks the saucepan hanging above the oven and drizzles the olive oil in the bottom of the pan before he dumps the onions into it.

Lilith snorts. “I know why you’re here,” she informs him, “but you probably haven’t eaten today and if you want to eat what I make then you help cook and clean.”

“Very fair.” Mick pokes the onions with a wooden spoon.

Lilith finishes with the apples and leaves them piled on the cutting board as she renegotiates herself off the stool next to the counter and starts loading the dishwasher with one hand while the other grips the countertop for balance. When that’s done, she sits back down and exhales a soft _woo_.

“You can’t date Sandra,” Lilith says while the onions caramelize.

“Why the hell not?” Mick wants to know.

“Because your idea of foreplay is setting people on fire,” Lilith deadpans.

“I never tried to set her on fire,” Mick protests as he turns off the burner, “not once.”

“Sandra said you were rough with her,” Lilith retorts, “but I have a hunch that your idea of rough sex is different from what she thinks rough sex is. Sandra didn’t like having sex with Milo after he stopped bothering to make it good for her,” her jaw clenches before she clarifies, “she doesn’t talk about it, but what happened to her was marital rape.” Mick growls. Lilith gives him another look, her considering head tilt eerily reminiscent of Leonard. “If he ever gets out of jail, you have my permission to burn him alive.”

Mick scoffs and puts the plate of sautéed onions on the counter next to the apples, a bag of pre-grated cheese, a small carton of heavy cream, and a bowl of peeled, thinly sliced potatoes. “I don’t need your permission.”

“Okay,” Lilith starts layering onions, cheese, apples, and potatoes in a casserole dish, sprinkling the apples with nutmeg and festooning the potatoes with black pepper. “So why are you here and not approaching Sandra on your own?”

“Because I want what Snart has with you and Palmer,” Mick grumbles because it’s easier to project anger than nervousness. “I’m not talking about the polyamory thing. I want to burn for someone. I know you’re the one who made it happen for him.”

“I’ve got a theory,” she yawns through the word _theory_ before she pours the cream over everything. “I think certain people and experiences are impossible to survive without triggering metamorphoses, like crucibles. Which for you was literally getting burned alive, but for Sandra it was becoming a mom and realizing she deserves better than dudes like her douchebag ex-husband. I don’t know if I can trust you with her.” Lilith does know the pyrokinetic girl from her visions is Sandra and Mick’s future daughter, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a thousand ways this could go wrong. “I really don’t know if I can trust you with Connor.”

Mick opens his mouth to argue just before the alarm goes off. “What the hell?” he yells.

Lilith hobbles into the great room, turns on the flatscreen, and uses the touchscreen to access the video feeds from their security system. There are two people trapped in the oubliette, dressed in suits tailored to conceal weaponry.

“What is that?” Mick yells just before she turns off the alarm.

“Cisco and Ronnie helped Len and Ray design a failsafe for when I’m here and they’re not,” Lilith explains, “and they did that after we made Len and Lisa watch _Labyrinth_ , so there are oubliettes involved. Apparently we’ve got prisoners to interrogate,” she grins up at him. “Are you in?”

“Are you going to call Snart?” Mick wants to know, “or Palmer?”

Lilith shakes her head so her hair flops over her face. “Ray will get an alert that something triggered the alarm,” she explains, “and I don’t want to call Len when he’s pulling a job.”

“Snart is going to be pissed,” Mick grins back at her belatedly.

Lilith shrugs and says “probably,” before she puts her hand on his forearm and moves them through space-time.

Mick draws his heat ray even though whoever is stuck in the oubliette aren’t getting out anytime soon. Lilith pulls up a chair next to the bars and says: “Hi, I’m Lilith Clay. Which you probably know.”

“Miss Clay,” says a tall blonde man with a passing resemblance to Captain America. “I’m Steve Trevor. I’m with A. R. G. U. S.”

She sees him shipwrecked on an island uninhabited by men. She sees a bulletproof woman in armor with a golden lasso.

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the _y_ sound awkwardly, “that sucks for you, because there’s an alternate universe in which you attempt to dissect my daughter and I kill Amanda Waller with my brain. I’d like to avoid that malarkey in this reality,” she looks at Mick, “so give me one good reason why I shouldn’t let him kill you right now.”

“A. R. G. U. S. has created technology capable of negating your abilities,” says a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Zoë Washburne, if she had straight hair.

“Really,” Mick retorts in a tone that blatantly says _I think you’re full of shit_ , “then why aren’t you using it against her?”

“Because we need her help to make it work,” the woman snarks back, “without a metahuman with chronokinetic abilities, we can only theorize. Director Waller wanted to take her by force, but Deputy Director Trevor convinced her to let us ask for her help with Project Slipshift instead.”

“What’s your name?” Lilith wants to know.

“Diana,” says the woman, “Special Agent Diana Patterson.”

“Okay,” Lilith makes a mental note to give Felicity their names after she lets them go. “Steve made a huge mistake coming here in person, Patterson.”

“I came in person because I want to act as a liaison between A. R. G. U. S. and Team Flash,” Steve informs her. “I was planning to make a formal proposal at S. T. A. R. Labs later this week. Dr. Caitlin Raymond—née Snow—patented a vaccine capable of temporarily rendering metahuman abilities dormant last year that none of our scientists have been able to replicate. Dr. Darwin Elias was the only person who managed to duplicate her work, but your Mr. Snart killed him and destroyed his research.”

Darwin Elias supplied his knockoff vaccine to Leonard’s father. Lilith is pragmatic enough to stand by her opinion that the thousands of metahumans in Central City who aren’t running around robbing banks or killing people are better off with him dead. “Cait doesn’t use her vaccine on people who don’t explicitly consent to having their powers taken away,” she retorts, “not even the ones in the pipeline. I have a hunch you won’t follow her example.”

At that moment, Shawna Baez teleports into their backyard, one arm linked with each of the Snart siblings. Lisa holsters her gold gun when she realizes the threat isn’t immediate. Leonard bends his firing arm to rest his cold gun on his shoulder and removes his goggles.

“Lilith,” he says in a deceptively calm voice, “you didn’t answer your phone when Ray called.”

“I left it inside when I came out here,” Lilith explains. “Shawna, would you mind taking Lisa to check on the food in the kitchen?”

Shawna tried to teleport out of the _Press Box_ —which was where she and her ex-boyfriend used to hang out—when she realized the Flash and his team came to karaoke every Wednesday night while Leonard was gone. Lilith stopped her and made Barry promise not to put her back in the pipeline if she agreed to do something with her life that wasn’t crime. Shawna decided to finish medical school and became the closest thing Lisa has to a best friend.

“Good luck with that.” Lisa smirks before Shawna links arms with her again and they teleport away.

“Len,” Lilith sighs, “you can’t kill them.”

“Yes,” Leonard retorts, “I can.”

“No,” Lilith says firmly. “I don’t have to be precognitive to know Amanda Waller—the Director to Steve’s Deputy Director—sent them here intending for their mission to fail so she could justify whatever her shady government agency wants to do to me for the greater good,” she crooks her fingers like quotation marks around the words _greater good_ , “you killing them doesn’t eliminate a threat. All it does is make things worse.”

“I’d listen to her,” Patterson yells up from the oubliette.

“Not helping,” Lilith stretches the _ing_ out in a futile attempt to unclench. “Len, please call Ray and tell him to let them out of the oubliette. Steve, when you come to S. T. A. R. Labs, you should be prepared to negotiate. With me.”

“With us,” Leonard says.

“With us.” Lilith takes the hand that isn’t holding his cold gun so he has to holster his weapon to make the call.

Mick keeps his heat ray pointed at the A. R. G. U. S. agents as the metal bars slide away and the floor rises until they’re aboveground. Steve offers his hand to her once he’s out of the oubliette. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Clay. I look forward to us working together on Project Slipshift.”

“Don’t touch her,” Leonard snarls.

Lilith rolls her eyes and shakes Steve’s hand. Which is awkward because he’s standing and she’s sitting. Leonard growls when Steve squeezes her hand before he lets go.

“Okay,” Lilith says, “tell Wonder Woman I said hello.”

“I will,” Steve grins at her.

“Yup,” Lilith waves to Patterson before she turns and looks at Leonard. “Steve is dating Wonder Woman,” she clarifies, “your jealousy is unattractive and unnecessary.” With that, she moves through space-time into the kitchen.

“Nice.” Mick makes a low, appreciative noise.

“Mick,” Leonard says. “Don’t.”

“I meant Wonder Woman,” Mick grins at him. “I’d hit that like the fist of an angry god.”

* * *

Ray is back from Tokyo for Steve’s formal presentation at S. T. A. R. Labs a week later. Lilith has been nesting in the bouncy castle while Leonard sleeps alone in their bed. Barry, Felicity, Iris, Eddie, Joe, Henry, Stein, Ronnie, Caitlin, Cisco, Lisa, Leonard and Mick are in the cortex on Level 600 waiting for Steve to show up when Ray corners her on Level 300 and asks: “Lil, what’s wrong?”

Lilith flops into her papasan chair and sighs. “I totally get where Len is coming from,” she says defensively.

Ray arches his eyebrows. “But?”

“But,” Lilith huffs, “I’d rather let A. R. G. U. S. study me on my own terms if the alternative is their version of the pipeline or death. I have to prove I’m not a threat so people like Amanda Waller won’t come after us with everything a shady government organization capable of nuking entire cities or toppling foreign governments has. Len can’t protect me from that,” she forces herself to look at him, “and neither can you. I don’t know if I can protect myself. I’m scared,” her voice wobbles and pitches higher before she whispers: “I’m so scared, Ray.”

Ray kneels and pulls her into his arms. Lilith fists her hands in his shirt and digs her fingers into his back through the fabric, clinging to him as she lets her tears fall.

“I think this is the first time you’ve ever let me see you cry,” Ray says softly.

Lilith sniffles. “I hate crying in front of people,” she gulps, “I just sat there whenever my mom would cry over my dad because I had no idea what else to do. I hate feeling helpless, powerless,” _weak_ , she remembers hearing the word in the vulnerable tone Leonard only uses with her. “I don’t want to make other people feel that way so I don’t cry where they can see me,” she sighs, “except I make Len feel that way no matter what I do.”

“Len loves you,” Ray presses their foreheads together as the elevator doors slide open, “we both do.”

“I know,” Lilith swallows thickly. “I love you both too. I just feel like my body isn’t mine anymore. Isaac is here, inside me, in my head. I can’t take my meds or use my powers or wear my own clothes or sleep on my stomach. I oscillate between feeling like I’m the grossest thing on the planet and being so turned on I can’t think straight. I’m exhausted and stressed the hell out. I can’t even touch myself anymore.”

“Well,” Leonard folds himself into the previously unoccupied swivel chair behind Ray, “if you have the spoons after this, I can do that for you.”

“Oh my god,” Lilith buries her face in her hands. “Len, this is a thing you can’t fix with sex.”

Leonard shrugs. “I know,” he exhales a melodramatic sigh, “that doesn’t mean I can’t offer my assistance.”

Lilith presses her palms over her mouth in a futile attempt to smother the cackles bubbling up from her throat. “Len,” she says, “thank you.”

Leonard grins because his plan to make her laugh rather than cry is working. “I love you very much,” he says, “you are so very welcome.”

Ray stands and puts his hand on the small of her back after she rises to her feet. Leonard keeps his hands folded in front of him until she offers him the hand that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane. “Okay,” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ , “let’s do this.”

Steve arrives with Etta Candy—his secretary—and a woman who introduces herself as Special Agent Diana Prince. Lilith emerges from the elevator in her wheelchair with Ray to her right and Leonard on her left. Ray has her cane tucked into the crook of his elbow; Leonard has one hand on his cold gun. Mick moves to stand next to Leonard, acknowledging Lilith with a nod before he draws his heat ray and holds it loosely next to his thigh. Lisa is sitting in a swivel chair in front of Cisco’s desk with him perched beside her. Caitlin occupies another swivel chair with Ronnie standing by her. Stein is close enough to Ronnie for them to access the FIRESTORM matrix if necessary. Barry is leaning against Felicity’s desk as she watches the A. R. G. U. S. agents warily from behind her monitor. Eddie and Iris stand shoulder to shoulder, Eddie’s gold detective shield and sidearm visible under his jacket, Iris’s arms folded and her hip cocked like a lethal weapon. Joe and Henry are next to their kids, Henry to Iris’s left and Joe to Barry’s right.

“What happened to Special Agent Patterson?” Lilith squashes the urge to squee because Wonder Woman is here in person, “did she exceed your Diana quota for today?”

“No,” Steve smiles and it seems genuine. “I thought you might like to meet Special Agent Prince.”

“Hi.” Lilith curses inwardly as her entire torso flushes.

“Hello,” Diana smiles and Lilith actually swoons.

After the team negotiates to have Project Slipshift researched at S. T. A. R. Labs and A. R. G. U. S. negotiates for access to their database without taking months to hack into Felicity’s system, Steve asks for a list of every metahuman in Central City and everyone looks at Lilith because she’s the only person capable of sharing that information. Which is a thing she refused to do when Cisco asked her to help him create a database on the rogues and other potential threats.

“No,” she says firmly, “to appropriate a hashtag: not all metahumans are dangerous. I won’t put harmless people who happen to have superpowers in danger, not if they’ll end up somewhere like the pipeline.”

“Lil,” Barry groans because they’ve had this argument before, “the pipeline is a necessary evil.”

“No,” Lilith retorts, “the pipeline allows you to pretend it’s acceptable to treat other metahumans like they’re subhuman because we’re not using our powers the way you think we should while you act like you’re the exception that proves the rule because you’re a hero.” With that, she exhales another soft _woo_ before she says: “Okay, you want a list of names?” and flails one hand across the cortex.

“Dr. Iris Ann West-Thawne, bachelors in communications, doctorate in journalism, mind like a cleaver. Edward Hugo Thawne, homicide detective with the C. C. P. D., earned his gold shield at twenty-three when he was still working for the K. C. P. D. before he moved to Central City. Joseph Ira West, homicide detective with the C. C. P. D., Eddie’s partner in fighting crime. Dr. Henry Paul Allen, doctorate from Hudson University, formerly incarcerated at Iron Heights for a murder he didn’t commit. Bartholomew Henry Allen, CSI, bachelors in chemistry, masters in forensic science, terminal do-gooder capable of moving faster than the speed of sound. Felicity Meghan Smoak, MIT class of 2009, got her bachelors in computer sciences when she was twenty, and can hack circles around your agents, which is why it took you weeks to get into our system before she booted you back out again.”

“Francisco Armando Ramon, bachelors in applied mathematics, masters in mechanical engineering, and sometimes when he claps his hands he creates sonic booms. Dr. Caitlin Elizabeth Raymond—née Snow—bachelors in evolutionary biology, masters in bioengineering, doctorate from Stanford, chronically unstable cryokinesis she stabilized with a vaccine she patented before her powers manifested. Ronald Roy Raymond—her husband—masters in structural engineering, capable of accessing the FIRESTORM matrix in concert with Dr. Martin Victor Stein, bachelors in chemistry, masters in thermodynamics, doctorate from Harvard, creator of the FIRESTORM matrix and occasionally combustible.”

“Mick Rory, arsonist, career criminal, pyromaniac, and wielder of a flamethrower that can burn the Flash, who doesn’t combust when he runs at hundreds of miles per hour. Lisa Snart, the first person in her family to graduate from high school, wielder of a superweapon that would make alchemists jealous, and a hell of a lot smarter than people who don’t know her think she is. Leonard Snart, high school dropout, world class thief, wielder of a cryogenic superweapon, a murderer, a criminal, and literally my soulmate, because the only versions of this reality in which we’re not in love with each other are the ones where I’m dead.”

“Dr. Raymond Arthur Palmer II, former CEO of Palmer Technologies, current CEO of S. T. A. R. Labs, officially a trillionaire as of last year, bachelors in computer science, masters in applied engineering, doctorates in particle physics, mechatronics, and molecular engineering, designed and built an exosuit out of dwarf star alloy, hates being compared to Iron Man because Tony Stark dealt in weapons of mass destruction and he would never. Ray is also my fiancée and the love of my life.”

Lilith pauses to get some air before she says: “Lilith Sibylla Clay, _en pointe_ at age nine, former prima ballerina with the Central City ballet company, Hudson class of 2013, bachelors in art history, graduated magna cum laude, currently unemployed because teaching beginner’s classes at my mom’s ballet studio isn’t a real job, twenty-five weeks pregnant with a psychokinetic baby due in May, preternaturally aware of what Ray and I call hypertime—a level of reality at which all things are possible—and capable of making the space-time continuum my bitch. I specifically told Cisco not to scramble whatever tech you brought with you because I don’t need to be precognitive to know Amanda Waller is listening. I wanted to say that you scare me. But,” she bites down on the  _t_ sound, “the feeling should be mutual. I’m aware of all your assets and I have a failsafe in place to destroy A. R. G. U. S. in the event of your sudden but inevitable betrayal,” she yawns through the word _inevitable_ , “don’t make me use it. Cisco, scramble now, please.”

“Hell yes.” Cisco grins before he activates the scrambler concealed in the pocket of his sweatshirt; feedback blares as at least half a dozen listening devices short circuit and die screaming.

“I think I speak for both Snart and myself when I say this,” Mick grins at Lilith when she turns and looks at him over her shoulder. “I am so turned on right now.”

Leonard hums in agreement. Lilith groans and slumps in her chair. “I’m not bluffing,” she informs Diana and Steve. “I used my powers to get the evidence that put my half-brother and our uncle in jail. I’ve been doing the same thing with A. R. G. U. S. for months. I saw this coming,” she yawns through the word _saw_. “I just didn’t expect it to happen this soon. I’ve only got, like, the past ten years of blackmail material, but it’ll have to do.”

“For real?” Barry gapes.

“Yup,” Lilith stretches the vowel sound out. “What do you think I do all day when I’m home alone?”

Leonard and Ray exchange a look because they assumed she naps, reads books, watches stuff on her laptop, cooks her meals for the week, and hangs out with her friends. Apparently she does all of that and makes contingency plans for destroying shady government agencies.

“Speaking of our home,” Leonard takes his goggles off and puts them in the pocket of his jacket, “we should go there.”

Lilith turns her chair toward the elevator and deadpans: “subtlety is not your wheelhouse, Len.”

Leonard shrugs and matches his pace to hers as the chair glides over the floor of the cortex. Lilith flips the switch to stop her chair in front of the sliding doors as Ray pushes the button for the elevator. Leonard waits for the doors to close before he says: “I didn’t think it could get better than you threatening Barry for me, but I was wrong. I’m going to kiss you _everywhere_.”

“Okay,” Lilith tilts her head back to look up at Ray. “What’s wrong, Ray?” she wants to know.

“Lil,” Ray sighs and squares his shoulders in a futile effort to feel braver than he does right now, “you called out a woman who almost blew Starling City off the map two years ago.”

“I know,” Lilith tugs her lower lip between her teeth and gnaws before she articulates. “I have nightmares about how badly this could end, but I need to stop catastrophizing and if I have to become the catastrophe to do it, then I guess that’s how things are going to be—”

Ray bends down and kisses her, his palm caressing her cheek as his fingers curl against the nape of her neck; his other hand squeezes her uninjured knee, his thumb stroking where her knee meets her thigh through the sheer fabric of her stockings. Lilith makes a soft noise when she kisses back and puts her hands on his neck so her fingertips map the familiar line of his jaw. “You are not a catastrophe,” he pulls back to grin crookedly at her as the elevator doors slide open. “You’re the love of my life.”

After they go home, Leonard kisses Lilith everywhere but where she wants his mouth the most until she’s soaked and squirming under him. Ray is curled up beside them with one hand smoothing over Leonard’s naked back, his other arm tucked around Lilith with her shoulder in the crook of his elbow and his fingers in her hair. Leonard keeps one hand on Ray’s waist the whole time, his thumb stroking his hipbone.

“Len,” she moans, “ _please_.”

Leonard smirks against her collarbone. “I’m not going to eat you out,” he chuckles low in his throat when she makes a disgruntled noise she refuses to categorize as a whine, “not tonight.” Lilith squawks when he takes his hand off Ray and rolls them to one side so she ends up in Leonard’s lap with his torso curved over her belly and his dick between her thighs. “I want you to ride me,” he turns and looks at Ray, “and I want you behind her.”

“Okay,” Lilith moves her hips and exhales a soft _woo_ when the head of his dick brushes over her clit. Ray kneels between Leonard’s legs and moves Lilith’s hair out of his way so he can kiss the tattoo behind her ear, the nape of her neck, the contour of her shoulder.

Leonard hisses as he slips into her slowly. “Did you mean what you said before?” he asks.

“Which thing?” Lilith puts her arms loosely around his neck. Ray palms her breasts and starts playing with her nipples, gently stroking them with his thumbs and flicking them with his fingertips hard enough to make her squirm again.

Leonard clenches his jaw when she does something with her hips, almost like a pirouette, that makes him curl his fingers into the flesh of her waist and thrust up into her as hard as he can. “That we’re soulmates,” he says, his voice raw with feelings he has no idea how to express.

Lilith moans as Ray bends down to lick along her spine. “This is probably a conversation we should have when you’re not inside me,” she huffs.

Leonard tilts his head in concession and twists his hand into her hair. “Say my name,” he growls before he scrapes his teeth over the hollow of her throat.

“Len,” Lilith closes her eyes and shudders. Ray’s legs tangle with Leonard’s as he puts one hand between their bodies to find her clit and roll it between his fingers.

“Say you love me,” Leonard whispers.

Lilith opens her eyes so she can meet his gaze. “I love you,” her breath hitches as pleasure coils between her legs, “both of you.”

“That’s good,” Leonard groans, “very good.”

Lilith leans in and kisses the hollow under his jaw as she moves her hips against his to take him faster, harder, deeper inside her. Leonard reaches for Ray and licks into his mouth as Lilith buries her face in the space between his neck and shoulder, her breathing hot and heavy against his clavicle when he comes inside her. Ray is hard against her ass when Lilith stops seeing stars and falls to earth.

Leonard gently lays her back against the pillows before he focuses on him. “Ray,” he says hoarsely, “I want to suck your dick.”

“Yeah,” Ray exhales a warm laugh and gives Leonard his lopsided grin, “like I’m going to say no to that.”

* * *

**February 2017**

* * *

Central City Museum is building an exhibit around the Star of Bombay—the largest sapphire in the world on loan to the museum from the Smithsonian—when it goes missing.

“It’s so strange,” Iris says to Lilith on Galentine’s Day. “It’s almost like the thief stopped time and took the sapphire.”

Lilith sips her chocolate milkshake noisily through her straw. “That is weird,” she looks at the tabletop because she is the worst liar.

“So,” Iris smiles at her, “I thought I’d ask Cisco to bring a tachyon detector to the crime scene to see if I’m right.”

Lilith forces herself to look at her best friend. “I didn’t steal anything,” she says firmly.

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t enable whoever stole the Star of Bombay,” Iris gives her a pointed look, “did Snart put you up to this? I know pulling a job with you is at the top of his bucket list, and your anniversary is tomorrow—” Lisa throws the stem from the cherry that came with her milkshake at Iris, whose mouth gapes open to accompany her epiphany. “It was you!”

Lisa tilts her head and her ensuing smile is full of thorns. “Prove it,” she says in a saccharine voice.

Iris scoffs and throws the paper from her straw at Lisa. Clarissa intervenes before a food fight happens. Julie raises her glass and toasts, “here’s to Central City not being in my jurisdiction!”

“Aren’t you a cold case detective?” Shawna asks between mouthfuls of lemon meringue pie.

“Yeah,” Julie grins, “here’s to grand larceny not being my problem! It makes dating Mark so much easier,” she clinks her glass with Lilith from across the table, “compartmentalization for the win!”

Lilith gives the Star of Bombay to Leonard when she exchanges anniversary gifts with him and Ray the next day, sitting at the apex of the giant couch with her knee elevated by a pair of decorative cushions and a bouquet of white roses from Ray in a vase on the coffee table.

“So,” Leonard smirks at her, “you’ll pull a job with my sister, but you won’t steal with me, hmm?”

Lilith makes a garbled noise that sounds like the bastard offspring of a snort and a groan. “I got Lisa to acquire the sapphire for me so I could gift it to you. I didn’t steal anything,” she yawns through the word _steal_ , “but I did stop time to make sure she wouldn’t get caught because she’s pregnant and she’s my sister too.”

Leonard inhales sharply when his heart clenches in his chest. Lisa is his family. It matters hugely that Lilith considers his sister part of her family too.

“I planned this with Lisa before Ray told me that one year is the paper anniversary,” Lilith gives Ray an affectionate look that says _you’re a dork_ without saying anything at all.

Leonard shrugs. “I broke the rules,” he turns and looks at Ray, “my gift to you is in the nursery. I know you don’t trust Mick—”

“I trust you,” Ray says, the certainty in his tone leaving no room for doubt.

Leonard smiles without showing his teeth, pleased. “Mick built a crib for Isaac,” he clarifies, “he finished it last week. I helped him carry it upstairs today when you were both at S. T. A. R. Labs,” he offers Lilith a paper box, “but my gift to you doesn’t require heavy lifting.”

Lilith opens the box and extracts a tiny silver pocketwatch on a delicate chain she recognizes. It belonged to her grandmother. The one who taught her to cook and bake after she sustained her injuries. The one who died a year after she graduated from college.

“It belonged to my grandfather,” Leonard says softly. “I know it’s a man’s watch, but—”

Lilith stops Leonard’s mouth with hers while Ray looks down at her gift to him: a collected leatherbound edition containing all seventeen issues of _The Comet_ , the first American sci-fi fanzine. Which was edited by Raymond A. Palmer, his granduncle and namesake.

“Hey,” says Ray, “a poet named Lilith Lorraine contributed to the first issue. Which, incidentally, was the only issue that was actually published as _The Comet_.”

Lilith nuzzles Leonard’s nose with hers before she says: “‘The light of other worlds is in his eyes, his voice is like a sunken temple chime, and many a moon that sings before it dies has heard him in the catacombs of time. Such souls come only when the cycles close, when the dark wine of ages mellowed long, blends terribly the tiger and the rose, seraph and satyr, savagery and song. Such souls come only when the dreamer wakes alone beneath a decomposing sky, before the dream dissolves in crystal flakes to hold new lamps for gods to travel by.’”

“What was that?” Leonard wants to know.

“It was beautiful,” Ray grins at her.

“‘The Cup Bearer’ by Mary Maude Wright,” Lilith moves her hair out of his way so Leonard can fasten her grandmother’s chain around her neck, “otherwise known as Lilith Lorraine. It’s the first three quatrains from my favorite poem of hers,” she looks at Ray. “It has two more quatrains, but I can’t remember them.”

“Well,” Ray turns and looks at Leonard, “my gift to you follows the rules of the anniversary overlords. It’s a pile of cash for us to have sex on. Which is technically paper.”

“What,” Lilith deadpans.

“I was drunk when I suggested that,” Leonard points out. It does nothing to wipe the smirk off his smug face.

“Oh my god,” Lilith buries her face in her hands. “Why are you the way that you are?”

Ray loosens his tie and drops it on the coffee table before he informs her: “the cash has never been circulated.”

Which means no visions shall ensue. Which means she has no reason not to indulge them. Lilith unclenches with a sigh. “Okay,” she raises her eyebrows like a challenge, “make it rain.”


	7. Where We Come from and Where We Call Home

**I didn’t fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.**

Kiersten White, _The Chaos of Stars_

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 6**  
Where We Come from and Where We Call Home

* * *

**March 2017**

* * *

Kathy throws Lilith a baby shower seven weeks before Isaac is due with the stipulation that no boys are allowed. Iris, Felicity, Caitlin, Lisa, Shawna, Julie, Sandra, Patty, and Fiona end up at the Kane estate in Windsor Heights on a Tuesday night.

“Why didn’t you ask me to host your baby shower?” Iris wants to know, “or Patty?”

“Patty has approximately fifty grand in student loans to pay off,” Lilith explains, “and you’re saving to buy a house with Eddie at some point. Kathy was just widowed by one of the wealthiest men in the world,” she lowers her voice because Nathan died six weeks ago, “she can afford to do this and it’s a good distraction for her. I’m killing so many birds with this one stone I’ve basically murdered a metaphorical aviary.”

As if on cue, Kathy calls her name. Lilith squawks and somehow manages to avoid spilling her pink lemonade. Instead she puts her crystal glass down and looks over at Kathy. “Hi,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Thank you for being there for Felicia after Nathan’s stroke,” Kathy exhales like banishing air from her lungs might trigger the ability to breathe out her grief, “she won’t talk to me or Fi.”

Lilith sighs. “I lost my dad last June,” she says softly. “I didn’t speak to my mom for weeks and I wouldn’t let Ray or Len go with me to the funeral. I think it’s easier for her to talk to me because she doesn’t know what to say to you.” Lilith pulls her lower lip between her teeth and her nostrils flare before she articulates: “sometimes it’s hard to share your broken heart with the people you love the most.”

Which might be why Kathy is throwing a baby shower for her sister’s girlfriend’s best friend from college, not dealing with her surviving in-laws contesting Nathan’s decision to will everything to her and Felicia. Kathy is significantly younger than her late husband and she was a notorious wild child with a reputation to rival billionaire playboys like Bruce Wayne—her nephew-by-marriage—before she married his uncle. Now people are calling her Black Widow because she’s a redhead; there isn’t much sympathy for her among the denizens of Central City because everybody who doesn’t know her thinks she’s a gold digger who got what she married a man twice her age for when he died.

Kathy swallows thickly and says: “I’m nine weeks pregnant.”

“Wow,” Lilith takes a sip of her lemonade, “you told Fi before you told me, right? I have superpowers, but your sister can totally kick my ass.”

Kathy nods. “I told my sister,” her mouth does something tragic before she whispers: “I didn’t get a chance to tell Nathan.”

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “I’d offer to reciprocate and throw you a baby shower,” she says gently, “but Fi should probably do that.”

After the baby shower ends later that night, Lilith moves through space-time into the nursery. The otherwise white walls are painted with swatches of ochre and various shades of green. The crib and other assorted furniture are draped in plastic sheeting to protect them from paint splatters.

Ray is painting one wall the shade of crocodile green they chose when she appears. “Hey,” he puts the roller in the paint tray and smiles at her. “How was it?”

“Good.” Lilith expertly maneuvers her chair through the nursery without disturbing the furniture or the paint supplies. “Kathy ordered thumbprint cookies from my favorite bakery. Patty must’ve told her about when I stress ate a whole box one day during finals week junior year. So,” she stands up slowly and shifts her weight off her knee, “did you end up letting Barry throw you a baby shower of your own?”

“No,” Ray closes the distance between them and pulls her into his arms, “because like Patty and Iris, Barry has no money. With his metabolism, I’m surprised he hasn’t eaten Joe out of house and home.”

“I’m surprised he and Felicity aren’t living together yet,” Lilith yawns through Felicity’s name.

Ray bends down to give her a kiss hello before he says, “I guess he doesn’t want to leave his dad after he grew up without him.”

Lilith curls her fingers against the nape of his neck and tugs him back down to kiss him breathless. Ray turned her down when she offered to go back in time and change the future to save the people he loved and lost. _Not if it means I lose you_ were his exact words. “I love you,” she tells him.

“I love you too,” Ray grins at her. “So did you bring home any leftover thumbprint cookies for me?”

Lilith nods and leans into him more for support than anything else because she left her cane on the back of her chair. “Felicia put them in the compartment under my chair,” she sighs because she couldn’t do it herself and she can’t get them out either.

“I know you hate not being able to do things yourself,” Ray says gently, “but in this case it’s not because of your disability, it’s because you’re almost eight months pregnant with our son.” Lilith hunches her shoulders and presses her forehead against his chest through the fabric of his t-shirt. Ray maps the familiar curve of her spine with one hand. “Lil,” he grins so hard and so warm she can hear it in his voice, “you’re making a tiny human from scratch. Len and I can do other things for you while you’re pregnant.”

One possibility keeping her up at night is that Leonard and Ray are going to expect her to do everything just because she happens to be the one carrying their son. “So,” Lilith tilts her head back to look up at him and raises her eyebrows like a challenge, “does that mean you’re going to stop doing things for me after Isaac is born?”

“No.” Ray’s hand moves down her back and over the flesh of her hip before he grabs her ass. “I plan on doing things for you, and with you, for the rest of my life. Or did my proposal not make those intentions clear?”

Lilith curls the fingers of her left hand into the fabric of his t-shirt and looks at the ring on her finger, the emerald catching the light and refracting iridescent shards of green. “No,” she slips her other hand into the back pocket of his jeans and gives him a squeeze of her own, “it did.” With that, she kisses his collarbone and gently scrapes her teeth over the skin exposed by his v-neck.

Ray groans as his dick twitches in his jeans. “I don’t think we should do this in here.”

“Okay,” Lilith closes her eyes and moves them through space-time into their bedroom, “for the record: it took weeks for me to teach Isaac how to block my thoughts and feelings. I’m not a telepath, so I was pretty much taking shots in the dark, but it ended well. Isaac can’t really comprehend sex,” she flops onto their bed, “but he’s glad you and Len can do something that makes me happy because sometimes I’m unhappy and that’s not his jam.”

Ray feels his stomach twist as he sits beside her on their bed. “Why are you unhappy?”

Lilith sighs. “I’m not unhappy now,” she explains as she toes her shoes off, “but I don’t have the spoons to be happy all of the time. Which doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong,” she clarifies, “it just is what it is.”

Ray looks at her over his shoulder as she scoots back against the pillows. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I guess because I don’t want you or Len to think I need fixing,” Lilith yawns through the word _think_. “I’m not broken. I’m just human. I don’t need fixing. I just need you to understand that sometimes I’m going to have bad days for reasons that have nothing to do with either of you.”

“Is today a bad day?” Ray wants to know.

“No,” Lilith huffs, “today was good.”

“Was?” Ray arches his eyebrows.

“Is,” Lilith gives him a pointed look, “but it’d be even better if you’d put your hands on me again.” Then a horrible thought occurs to her and she blurts: “unless you don’t want to. I mean, it’s fine if you don’t, I just—”

Ray leans in and puts his right hand on her face to kiss her again. Lilith sweeps her arm under his to pull him down on top of her and scoops the fingers of her other hand under the hem of his t-shirt. One good thing about their height difference is that the dome of her belly doesn’t stop him from kissing her and grinding their hips together at the same time.

“Lil,” Ray kneels between her legs and pulls his shirt over his head. “I always want to put my hands on you,” he grins when she props herself up on her elbows and lifts her hips to take her maternity dress off, “I have ever since you first told me I could.”

“So the whole pregnancy thing,” Lilith flails one hand at her bare stomach, “it doesn’t turn you off?”

“Not at all,” Ray shakes his head at the absurdity of the notion and the vehemence in his voice leaves no room for insecurities. “Lil, you’re pregnant with my baby,” he strokes his fingers over the convex of her belly, “if anything, it turns me on.”

“I could’ve probably deduced that,” Lilith unclasps her own bra and shrugs the straps off her shoulders, “but it’s nice to hear.”

Ray moves his hands from her belly to her breasts, the rough pads of his thumbs on her nipples enough to make her squirm under him. Lilith wraps her arms loosely around his neck and runs her fingers through his hair. Ray flicks his tongue over her left nipple and sucks it into the heat of his mouth, contrasting the cool metal surface of the pocketwatch hanging below the hollow of her throat. Lilith digs her nails into the nape of his neck as he moves his mouth from her left nipple to her right and his ensuing groan quakes through her. Ray sits up to unbutton his jeans, unzip his fly, kick his pants off, and pull her panties down her thighs. Lilith feels them slip off her uninjured ankle when he thrusts into her. Ray moans low in his throat when she does something revolutionary with her hips. Lilith slants their mouths together in something that is less a kiss and more an exchange of tattered breathing just before he comes inside her.

“Lil,” Ray presses his forehead against hers as he pulls out and rasps, “you didn’t...”

“No,” Lilith shakes her head, “but it’s fine—”

“No,” Ray kisses her temple before he slides one hand between her legs and makes a sloppy circle over her clit with his thumb, “it’s not.”

“Ray,” Lilith protests, “I’m full of—”

“I know,” Ray curls two fingers slick with his own mess inside her, “it’s mine. I came,” he grins when she writhes all over his hand, “you didn’t.” Lilith sinks her nails into the flesh of his bicep as the buildup to her orgasm throbs between her legs. Ray whispers “not yet,” before he scrapes his teeth over the sensitive place behind her ear.

Ray carries her into their bathroom after he makes her come twice with his fingers. Lilith sits in her shower chair and washes her hair. Ray joins her in the shower after he changes the sheets.

“Did you and Len ever talk about the whole soulmate thing?” he wants to know.

Lilith sighs presses her forehead against the back of her shower chair. “No,” she says. “Why?”

“If he’s your soulmate,” Ray asks, “then what am I?”

“I meant what I said,” Lilith exhales a soft pleasure noise when he starts washing her back, “you’re the love of my life. There are worlds in which Felicity loves you back, where Anna survives, where you and Cisco become a thing, where you stay in Starling City and realize you have oodles in common with a woman named Helena, right down to the dead fiancées. There’s a version of me who’s trans and goes by Laz, short for Lazarus. There’s another version of me who ends up using a wheelchair after Len crashes the train he derailed two years ago. There’s a version of me who never got adopted. There’s another version of me that’s basically a vampire slayer who lives in LA with another version of Lisa who actually became a figure skater. There’s a version of me who falls for Cisco in high school and ends up hiring Len to avenge his death after Wellsoboard murders him. There’s a parallel universe where Len is a cop, I’m a blind criminal mastermind, and you’re dating an alternate version of Barry. Which doesn’t change how we feel about each other here in this reality. I think Anna is your soulmate,” she turns and looks at him over her shoulder, “but that doesn’t make me a consolation prize. I mean, you still love her, don’t you?”

Ray nods. “I probably always will,” he confesses.

“Why do you think I offered to change her future?” Lilith inhales sharply when he finishes washing her belly and moves the pouf between her legs. “I love you enough to screw with the space-time continuum. Which is a thing I never do. I’d break my own heart to make you happy,” she gnaws on the inside of her cheek, “please don’t ever doubt how much you mean to me.”

“I don’t,” Ray shakes his head as she washes her own legs and feet before she hands the pouf to him, “but I have no idea how you can be aware of those possibilities without letting them effect how you feel about us.”

“I do,” Lilith uses her uninjured leg to turn in her chair so she can watch him soap up his own body, “I don’t want to live in a reality where you don’t love me.”

Ray can’t take his eyes off her, naked but for his ring on her finger, her belly full of their unborn son. “Ours is the superior reality,” he says, and the grin he gives her is crooked and heartrending.

Lilith swallows thickly. “Hell yeah,” she retorts.

* * *

Cisco didn’t start the online cult following of the Flash, his team, and his rogues’ gallery. Iris’s blog is how it all began. However, does actively contribute to the fandom as Sidekick101 at first, then as Vibe after he gets his own codename. When he encounters someone using the handle KillerFrost he assumes it’s Caitlin—even though she hates her codename because it originates from a supervillainous version of her that murdered Ronnie—but it turns out to be her cousin Crystal Frost: a sophomore at Hudson University majoring in biophysics. Which is how Crystal ends up squeeing in the cortex at S. T. A. R. Labs one afternoon.

“So you’re Vibe!” Crystal leans against Cisco’s desk, “and you’re dating Golden Glider! That’s so cool,” the edge of his desktop ices over when she gets excited, “best day _ever_.”

Cisco’s eyes widen as his eyebrows rise. “It’s like she’s a perky blonde version of you,” he informs Caitlin.

“Crystal wants to be a biophysicist. I’m a bioengineer,” Caitlin protests, “we’re completely different.”

Ronnie laughs. “Of course you focus on what kinds of biology interests you both instead of the obvious family resemblance,” he says. When he kisses his wife, he smiles against her mouth. Caitlin is smiling back after he pulls away.

“Frostbite,” Lilith blurts.

Cisco, Caitlin, Ronnie, and Crystal all turn to look at her. Cisco says: “wait, what?”

“Crystal is Killer Frost,” Lilith elaborates, “Caitlin can be Frostbite.”

“Or,” Cisco bobs his head enthusiastically as he brainstorms, “the Ice Maiden!”

“I like Frostbite,” Ronnie says, “the Ice Maiden sounds like a yuki-onna knockoff or something.”

Felicity started running mission control for the Birds of Prey remotely from the cortex after she reconnected with Laurel over the holidays. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she covers the microphone next to her mouth so the Black Canary doesn’t get distracted, “Ronnie Raymond: weeaboo trash.”

Ronnie shrugs because he knows she cried at the end of _Sailor Moon R, the Movie: Promise of the Rose_ and she isn’t fooling anyone.

“Frostbite it is,” Caitlin shakes her head so her curls slither over her shoulders, “if I must.”

“Yes,” Felicity hacks the A. R. G. U. S. satellite with one hand to get a better eye in the sky over Starling City, “you must.”

* * *

Lilith offers to babysit Mark and Julie’s son Josh so they can have a night to themselves. Ray is in Ivy Town again for another alumni benefit at his alma mater, but Leonard is there with her. Which is good, because he’s the only person in their relationship who has any experience with infants.

“Is it wrong that watching you feed a baby turns me on?” Lilith wants to know. “I mean, it’s not even our baby.”

“Well,” Leonard shrugs carefully to avoid disturbing Josh, “it will be in six weeks.”

Lilith exhales a louder _woo_ and presses both hands against her belly. “I’m fine,” she huffs when Leonard gives her a worried look, “Isaac’s kicking.”

Leonard smirks. “Doesn’t that only happen when your heart beats faster?”

“Not necessarily,” Lilith hedges.

“Lilith,” Leonard says her name in a low voice, “you’re lying, and you’re not very good at it.”

“I’m not,” Lilith retorts, “but you do make my heart beat faster. Which is what you want to hear.”

After they put Josh down for the night, Lilith hobbles out of their bathroom just before Ray calls to check in. “Hey,” she puts him on speaker as she flops onto their bed next to Leonard.

Leonard steals her phone and puts it on the pillow between them. “How are the distinguished alums of Ivy Town University?” he asks.

“Good.” Ray notices the thread of insecurity underneath the condescension in his voice that’s probably there because he didn’t even bother to finish high school, but he doesn’t call Leonard on it.

Lilith takes his right hand with her left and intertwines their fingers. “Is the college of engineering still trying to wheedle you into giving another guest lecture on biomechatronics?” she wants to know.

“Yeah,” Ray sounds pleased at the idea. “Professor Hyatt wants me to give one later this week. Do you mind if I stay longer?”

Lilith shakes her head before she remembers Ray can’t see her. “No,” Leonard smiles because he can hear how much Ray wants to talk at a roomful of engineering students about what he loves.

“So,” Ray elongates the vowel sound until it becomes an innuendo. “What are you wearing?”

Lilith cackles and covers her mouth with her palm. “Really?” she actually squeaks.

Leonard uses his other hand to unclasp her maternity bra. “Nothing,” he takes back his hand to hook his fingers under the waistband of her panties and drag them down over her thighs, “she’s undressed now.”

“What about you?” Ray wants to know.

Leonard chuckles low in his throat and opens his mouth to lie. Lilith snorts. “Len was wearing sweatpants,” she blushes when he pulls them down and reveals that he isn’t wearing anything underneath, “but he’s undressed now.” With that, she takes Leonard’s hand in both of hers to kiss his fingertips, his knuckles, his palm, before she sucks on the inside of his wrist.

“Lil,” Ray says. “What are you doing?”

“I’m seducing,” Lilith kisses his jaw and the hollow under it, then licks and sucks her way down his neck to his throat before she gently bites his collarbone. “I don’t touch Len this way most of the time,” she smiles against his clavicle when he clenches his jaw and twists one hand into her hair, “because he’s a control freak who likes to take my hands out of the equation.”

“Say ‘equation’ again.” Ray’s voice is rough.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ because she knows what he looks like with his own hands on his dick and does one better: “the golden spiral is created with circular arcs that connect the opposite corners of squares in Fibonacci tiling,” she strokes her fingertips over the head of Leonard’s dick as she wraps her other hand around him. “Fibonacci numbers are likewise intimately connected to the golden ratio, which is also called divine proportion.” Leonard closes his eyes and his hips jerk into her hand as she continues, “the golden ratio naturally occurs in phyllotactic spirals—”

“Ray,” Leonard groans. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” Ray says hoarsely, “the word ‘phyllotactic’ is an amalgamation of the Ancient Greek _phyllon_ and _taxis_ , which loosely translates to ‘leaf arrangement’—”

Leonard inhales sharply and makes a strangled noise in his throat. “How do you know that?” his breath hitches around the word _know_.

Ray shrugs before he remembers Leonard can’t see him. “I actually have no idea,” he exhales a soft laugh, “I probably read it somewhere.”

Leonard rolls onto his back. Lilith takes her hands off him and watches him breathe as he struggles to regain control. “Ray,” he says in a raw voice, “I’m going to make her come so hard she won’t be able to form words like Fibonacci or phyllotactic.” With that, he puts two pillows underneath her hips to give himself a better angle before he puts her thighs on his shoulders and buries his face between her legs.

“Ray,” Lilith grabs the phone to keep it from falling between the headboard and the wall, “Len is doing that thing with his tongue,” she shudders when he splays one hand over the dome of her belly and sucks on her clit mercilessly, “the flick and swirl, y’know? I’ve seen him when he sucks you _off_ ,” she makes a high noise in her throat, “I know it doesn’t just apply to me.”

Ray swallows thickly. “Len, make her come. I want to hear—”

Leonard hums against her slit and licks her until she unspools for both of them. Lilith tastes herself on his tongue when he crawls up her body to kiss her slick and deep before he slips all the way into her.

“Ray,” she says, “we love you.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Leonard hisses as she clenches around him, “and miss you, too.”

Leonard makes a guttural noise against her throat when he comes inside her. Lilith nuzzles his nose with hers and listens to Ray breathe through the aftermath of his own orgasm.

“I love you both,” Ray grins and huffs a happy sigh, “and miss you more.”

After they say goodnight, Lilith flops over the pillows to plug her phone into the charger on their bedside table. Leonard makes a low, appreciative noise at the view of his mess trickling down her thighs. Lilith rolls her eyes where he can’t see her before she gets out of bed. “I have to pee,” she informs him as she waddles toward their bathroom, “please strip the pillows when you change the sheets.”

“Why are you so weird about this?” Leonard wants to know.

Lilith puts her hand on their bathroom doorway for balance and looks at him over her shoulder. “I have no idea,” she sighs, “I guess I’m just not used to the raw sex. Which doesn’t mean I don’t like it,” she flushes hard enough that he knows her blush isn’t just afterglow, “did you know I can feel the difference when you’re inside me whether we use condoms or not? Ray is longer, but you’re thicker.”

Leonard smirks. “Why didn’t you say that over the phone?”

“Ray wanted me to talk nerdy to him,” Lilith shrugs, “luckily everyone got off before we exhausted my limited knowledge of mathematics.” With that, she hobbles into their bathroom and closes the door behind her.

Ray returns home a week later with an infant Ryan Choi in a baby carrier. Ryan is only a few weeks old, just aware enough to turn his head at the sound of their voices.

Lilith almost has a panic attack on the couch. “So,” she deadpans once she feels capable of breathing normally, “you brought us a baby. What, you couldn’t wait until May?”

“May was actually his mother’s name,” Ray informs the floor, “it was a difficult pregnancy because she was forty-nine when she conceived,” he looks at Leonard because he asked her age like he expected her to be significantly younger, “she died from the complications when he was a few days old. Professor Choi didn’t have any family. May brought her mother over from Kowloon after her father died, but they had to put her in an assisted living facility a few years ago because she has Alzheimer’s.” Ray forces himself to look at them, his eyebrows furrowed and eyes wide in earnest, his nervous fingers grasping the empty air. “I’m his _gān diē_ ,” he says softly, “that’s godfather in Mandarin.”

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know where this is going. Suddenly it’s harder to breathe than it should be.

“So you want to adopt him,” Leonard kneels next to the baby carrier on the floor to pick Ryan up.

Ray tilts his head up as his eyes flick to one corner of the ceiling. “I might’ve already filled the forms out,” he grins sheepishly and tucks his hands in his pockets. Lilith actually does have a panic attack then. “Lil,” Ray touches her belly to check for Braxton Hicks contractions.

Once she tried to explain her anxiety to her mom and she said it was like a noise in her head, fluctuating low-key until it gets so loud she can’t hear anything else. Which is why she doesn’t hear Ray call her name. “ _No_ ,” Lilith says through clenched teeth, “don’t touch me right now.”

Ray flinches at her tone and takes his hands off her. Leonard sits on the couch between them and gives Ryan to him before he faces her. “Lilith,” he keeps one hand on Ray’s knee and reaches for her with the other, his thumb stroking over her clavicle as his fingertips curl gently into the flesh of her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Okay,” Lilith says, “here’s how this is going to work: you’re going to make Felicity temporary CEO of S. T. A. R. Labs before you take the maximum amount of paternity leave possible, and you’re not going to pull another job until both of these boys are in preschool. I like how you’re not here all of the time because it gives me space to be my own person outside of this relationship, but that’s not conducive to parenthood so things are going to change. I refuse to raise a kid or two alone.” With that, she closes her eyes and inhales slowly as she comes full circle. “Okay?”

“Nobody is asking you to do this alone,” Ray says as Ryan gurgles and wraps a handful of tiny fingers around his pinkie. “I’m sorry for making a unilateral decision without talking to both of you first. I just couldn’t leave him back there.”

Lilith sighs. “I know,” she says, “I wouldn’t love you half as much if you could’ve.”

“Why didn’t you see this coming?” Leonard wants to know.

 _Why didn’t you warn me, universe?_ Lilith thinks. Aloud, she says: “I think the universe enjoys throwing shenanigans at me,” her exasperated tone fades into something fond because every choice I’ve made has given her everything she has ever wanted. “I can handle an accidental baby acquisition,” she looks over Leonard’s shoulder at Ray and Ryan, “but someone needs to get diapers. Sandra told me babies use, like, ten a day?”

Leonard nods. “Lisa went through at least seven every day when she was a baby,” he informs them.

Lilith flops onto her side and leans over to extricate her phone from the charger under the coffee table. “Ray,” she flails awkwardly before she sits up again, “you gave Felicity a company card, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Ray nods his affirmative. “Why?”

“I’m texting Barry a list of things we’re probably going to need,” she explains, “like a multitude of diapers. And baby wipes. And baby powder. And formula, because my milk won’t come in until after Isaac is born, even though I’ve gone up a whole cup size in the meantime. May and Professor Choi probably had a nursery set up, so you should have the stuff they bought for Ryan shipped here.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Ray wonders.

“Well,” Leonard tilts his head when he looks at Ray, “you said his parents didn’t have any family. Which means you made the arrangements for her funeral. That’s why it took so long for you to come home,” he deduces, “it wasn’t just the guest lecture.”

Ray nods again, a mournful descent of his chin.

Lilith puts her phone down on the glass surface of the coffee table. “Barry said he’ll be here in a flash,” she snorts.

“I hope the speed force doesn’t ruin our emergency baby supplies,” Ray yawns through the word _ruin_. Ryan must’ve kept him from sleeping on the jet. Which takes a toll after losing sleep over making the arrangements to bury May Choi beside her husband.

“Ray,” Lilith says gently, “give Ryan to me and go take a nap. I don’t need to be precognitive to know you haven’t slept for days.”

Leonard rises in one smooth motion to access the security system and open the gates for Barry. Ray leans in and tilts her face up to kiss her mouth. “Thank you,” he whispers, his breath warm against her lips.

“Yup,” Lilith boops Ryan on the nose before he buries his little face in her shoulder. “I will end you if he pees on me before the cavalry arrives.”

Ray cocks his head and arches his eyebrows as he thinks it over. “That’s fair,” he concedes.

* * *

**April 2017**

* * *

Caitlin’s cousin Crystal is dating Luna Nurblin, a computer sciences major at Hudson University who applies for an internship at S. T. A. R. Labs. Luna reveals herself as a metahuman on her first day when she uses her technopathic abilities to dampen the powers of every other metahuman in the building and disable all of the technologies within range—including the forcefield keeping the rogues in the pipeline—before she points a gun at Leonard.

Ronnie and Stein try to access the FIRESTORM matrix; when that doesn’t work, they both deliberately position themselves in front of Caitlin. Cisco topples his desk and pulls Lisa behind it; she’s in her second trimester now, and it shows. Leonard draws his weapon and holsters the cold gun after it fails to power up. Ray puts himself between Lilith and the gun. Felicity tries to call Barry, but that doesn’t work either.

“The hell,” Lilith yelps as the motor that powers her wheelchair dies a horrible death.

Luna starts yelling about how Leonard killed her father and her voice breaks on the word _father_. Lilith notices the safety is still on.

“Just…” Felicity holds up her hands in surrender. Okay, so this is bad. What’s worse is that she’s actually used to being held at gunpoint. _Welp_ , she thinks, _at least I’m not hogtied this time_. “Just calm down.”

“Nurblin,” Caitlin presses her mouth into a thin line. “I knew that name sounded familiar,” her eyes widen in recognition, “you’re Basil Nurblin’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“I remember him,” Cisco says. “Nurblin was a janitor here for years,” he flails his hands and elaborates, “he stole the cold gun, and the heat gun, and probably all the other tech that went missing after the particle accelerator exploded.”

“My dad had cancer,” Luna points the gun at Cisco, “he beat it, but S. T. A. R. Labs health insurance wouldn’t cover his medical bills, so he needed the money. I know he wasn’t perfect, but he was my dad, and you took him away—”

“Okay,” Lilith raises her voice and Luna shuts up. “I’m thirty-five weeks pregnant and I’ve been off my meds for months.” Caitlin mutters something that sounds like _why aren’t you on bed rest yet?_ Lilith ignores her. “I don’t have the spoons for this,” she huffs. “If you’re going to shoot Len, then just do it.”

“I don’t want him dead,” Luna snarls. “I want him to _hurt_.”

“Okay,” Lilith retorts, “then shoot me.”

“ _No_.” Leonard growls, his fingers curling into his palms as he quells the urge to reach for the garden variety gun inside his jacket.

“Lil,” Ray looks at her over his shoulder, “now is really not the time to conquer this particular fear.”

Leonard stops cold. “Lilith,” he says in a deceptively calm voice, “what does that mean?”

Lilith tables her answer to his question for another time. “If she wanted to kill anyone here she would’ve done it by now,” she doesn’t need to be precognitive deduce that. Luna is holding the gun with both hands and her arms are shaking. If she’s ever held a gun before, she hasn’t done it for an extended period of time. If she really wanted to kill anyone, her plan would’ve been to shoot first and monologue later. “If you want to hurt Len the way that you hurt,” she uses her cane to get back on her feet and hobbles past Ray to make herself a better target, “then shoot me.”

“I can’t,” Luna shakes her head so vehemently that her gun wobbles in her hands, “you’re pregnant.”

“Well,” Lilith says flatly, “whose baby do you think I’m having? If you blow my head off, my son will probably survive. Len will shoot you before this malarkey cycles through, but you’ll have your revenge and whatnot, so either take a shot or drop the gun.”

Luna drops the gun as she collapses to the floor and a frustrated wail unfurls from her throat, her entire body trembling from a deluge of grief with a side of impotent rage.

Cisco scrambles out from behind his flipped desk and snatches the gun off the floor. “Seriously?” he heaves a gargantuan sigh of relief, “the safety was on the whole time? Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Yup,” Lilith flops back into a swivel chair because the motor that makes her wheelchair go needs fixing but she doesn’t want to address that right now. Leonard is looking at her with so much anger that she put herself in the line of fire. Which is totally his fault. “I can bring your dad back,” she informs Luna, “but if I screw with the space-time continuum to do it then you’ll never meet Crystal.” Which in turn would mean she’ll never end up here. If this point in time establishes a causality loop, then Luna will choose her girlfriend over her father. “If you’re cool with that, then I’ll make it happen.” Ray and Leonard turn to look at her simultaneously. Lilith rolls her eyes at their nonverbal _how about no_ and clarifies: “after the whole pregnancy thing is over.”

“I know I’m not an OBGYN or your doctor,” Caitlin says, “but I am a doctor and I’m prescribing bed rest.” At that, she makes a shooing motion with her hands and says: “go home, Lil.”

Lilith nods before she unhooks her purse from the back of her wheelchair so she can write her cell number on a neon orange post-it. Which she sticks to Luna’s shoulder so it clashes with her cardigan. “I’m due in the first week of May,” she says gently, “so take the time to think it through.” With that, she waddles to the elevator and presses the button; when the doors slide open, she waits for the _ding_ to quiet before she says: “Omen out.”

Ryan somehow managed to sleep through the second step of Luna’s grieving process, but he wakes up when Ray puts him back in his baby carrier. Leonard follows her into the elevator and folds his hands in front of him to stop himself from reaching for her when she exhales a soft noise in pain. Lilith leans against the railing and holds her cane in the elevator doorway so Ray can send his godson home with them while the Atom, the Flash, and Vibe handle the metahumans who escaped from the pipeline.

“Lilith,” he says her name and his tone is so vulnerable that her heart constricts in her chest even though she wants to kick him in the face again, “what are you afraid of?”

Lilith sighs and shifts her weight off her knee. “If you’re ever forced to choose between me and yourself, I’m scared you’ll put yourself first,” she tucks her hair behind her ear so she can’t hide behind it avoid his gaze. Then as an afterthought she adds: “not that I want you to die for me. I don’t,” she says firmly. Ray would die for her without hesitation, but that’s just one more potential disaster to add to her generous supply.

“I told you I can’t live without you,” Leonard says softly, “and I meant it. I’d prefer dying to losing you.”

Lilith gnaws on the inside of her cheek before she squares her shoulders. Then she asks: “do you remember the argument we had after I told you about the promise I made to Barry?”

“Well,” Leonard says flatly, “I remember you making a deal with the Flash on my behalf without talking to me first.”

“I think we’ve gotten to the point in our relationship where the consequences of your actions have become my problems too,” Lilith retorts. “I know you promised not to hurt me again,” her knuckles clench white on the railing, “but promises don’t protect me from the repercussions of your selfishness. I have to protect myself,” she looks down at the curve of her belly, then further below at Ryan on the floor in his baby carrier. “I have to protect our kids.”

“I’m sorry,” Leonard clenches his jaw around his apology.

“But you’re not,” Lilith shakes her head so her hair flops over her face, “you don’t regret hurting and killing people. Which is fine with me. But why kill Basil Nurblin?” she side-eyes him, “because you thought he knew too much?”

“Basil Nurblin was a loose end,” Leonard shrugs, “he was expendable.”

“But not to Luna,” Lilith says softly, “like how I was expendable to your dad. But not to you.”

“No,” Leonard swallows thickly, “not to me.” What’s bad is that he still won’t leave her ever again even if this malarkey persists. What’s worse is that he doesn’t feel guilty at all. What’s done is done. Leonard doesn’t want to waste the woman he loves on undoing his mistakes, especially since he regrets approximately none of them.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ as she lets go of the railing. Then she tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow and leans against his side. “I’m not mad,” she clarifies as he unclenches beside her, “it’s just that you have a lot of skeletons in your closet, so loving you is like being drafted into the skeleton war. But,” she looks up at him over his shoulder as the elevator doors slide open, “I’m a fleshy human with a bad knee and no spoons. I can’t win.”

Leonard bends over to hook the handle of Ryan’s baby carrier over his other arm. “Ray will build you an exosuit,” he grins at her, “then you’ll win the skeleton war.”

Lilith buries her face in the fabric of his jacket and groans against his elbow before they leave the elevator.

Hank Hall is waiting in the parking lot, perched on top of a streetlamp with his talons out and wings he didn’t have in his last close encounter with Lilith folded over his shoulders; whatever Luna did to dampen their powers must not have worked on him. Leonard drops the baby carrier and pulls her down to avoid his talons when he spreads his wings and swoops down toward them. Ryan starts bawling while Lilith tries and fails to stop time. When that doesn’t work, she grabs Leonard’s garden variety gun from the holster on his left thigh and struggles to stand up as she thumbs the safety off, her knee screaming in protest. Hank swoops down toward them again. Lilith fires two shots and takes out both his wings. Hank falls to the ground, his blood oozing bright red over his brown feathers.

Leonard is still on the ground. When he rolls onto his side to look up at her, the look on his face is pleasantly surprised. “I didn’t see that coming,” he says, “thought it was beginners’ luck before.”

“What, when I shot your dad’s kneecap out before you killed him?” Lilith makes a pained noise and wobbles because she left her cane on the back of her chair in her haste to leave.

Leonard grins because he remembers that day as his best birthday ever. “Yes.”

Ryan stops crying abruptly. Lilith has a hunch Isaac is telepathically making that happen. Leonard rises to his feet and picks up the baby carrier in one smooth motion. Then he wraps one arm tight around her shoulders and pulls her body against his to support her in every sense of the word. Lilith keeps the gun pointed at Hank with one hand as she shifts her weight off her bad knee and puts her other arm around Leonard’s waist. With a sigh, she says: “I don’t want to kill you, Hank.”

“I do,” Leonard curls his fingers into the flesh of Lilith’s shoulder, “but I’m not going to.”

As if on cue, the Atom lands to Lilith’s right and somehow manages not to make a crater in the pavement for once. Ray points his plasma cannon at Hank and says: “guys, I’ve got this. Len, take Lil home. I’ll see you there when I’m finished here.”

Lilith shrugs and thumbs the safety off before she tucks the gun back in its holster. Then she extracts her phone from her purse and texts Don: **your brother tried to kill me again, should I let my fiancée put him back in the pipeline, y/n?**

Don replies: **Kendra thinks Hank is the latest reincarnation of her star-crossed soulmate.**

Lilith raises her eyebrows at that and texts back: **okay, so the Atom should lock him up and kill two hawks with one stone?**

Don responds: **as long as his abilities are augmented by his anger management issues, I think the pipeline is the best place for him to be.**

Lilith puts her phone back in her purse and says: “Don says it’s fine,” she strokes her fingers over the warm hexagonal metal of Ray’s exosuit covering his spine before she says: “I love you.” With that, she hobbles to the car and flops into the passenger’s seat.

“Don’t die,” Leonard orders. What he means is, _I love you too_.

* * *

Lilith submits to Caitlin’s illicitly prescribed bed rest during the last month of her pregnancy even though she hates it with the fire of a thousand suns; her sex drive has ceased to exist, her anxiety is turned up to eleven, she cries at the drop of a hat, and she deeply regrets telling Isaac not to change her brain chemistry—or anyone’s mind for that matter—from the womb or elsewhere.

Ray spends most of his time at S. T. A. R. Labs so he can get as much work done as possible before Isaac is born. Ryan has subsequently taken up semi-permanent residence in his baby-proofed office. Leonard stays at home to hover around Lilith after they finish painting and furnishing the nursery. Luckily the room itself is big enough for two cribs: the one Mick built for Isaac and the one Ray had shipped from Ivy Town for Ryan.

“Okay, enough.” Lilith flails in his arms in a hollow attempt to get away. “I love you, but we have literally been cuddling for days and you’re stressing me out. Go to the bar. Go rob a bank. Go challenge Barry to another futile rematch that you will inevitably lose. I don’t care.”

“I love you too,” Leonard kisses her temple before he takes his hands off her, “and I don’t lose.”

“In what universe?” Lilith scoffs, “not this one.”

Leonard shrugs. “I have everything I want,” he says, “I consider that a win.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the _oh_ sound until it becomes an _ooh_ , “now please go away.”

Leonard knows this is less about him and more about her anxiety heralding the anticipation of giving birth, so he rolls with it and gets out of bed. Then he smirks at her over his shoulder and asks: “can I get dressed before I go?”

“Yup.” Lilith doesn’t need to have a sex drive to appreciate the unobstructed view of his naked body; there’s no coil of heat in her belly tonight, but there’s a calm intimacy in the knowledge that he feels comfortable enough with her to let it all hang out. “Go put on your supervillain coat and make ice sculptures or whatever,” she yawns through the word _ice_ , “I have sleeps to sleep.”

Iris, Caitlin, and Felicity come over to cheer her up the next day. Ryan is at home with her because Ray has meetings all day. Leonard is elsewhere with Mick, Mark, Lisa, and Shawna. Lilith unclenches as her friends crawl into bed with her. Iris curls up to her right, Felicity flops back against the pillows to her left, and Caitlin sits across from her with her ladylike upbringing evident in her posture.

 _I’m glad our mattress is big enough for all of us_ , Lilith thinks, _Anita Blake would probably call it orgy-sized_.

“Ryan is so quiet here,” Caitlin says, “but not at S. T. A. R. Labs. I wonder why that is.”

“Isaac tells me what Ryan needs so the crying becomes a moot point,” Lilith yawns through the word _moot_ before she scoffs. “Ray actually thought it was maternal instinct or some bullshit until I explained it was telepathy.”

“How do you feel about Ray adopting his godson?” Iris wants to know.

Lilith doesn’t know how to feel about that—part of her thinks Ryan is maybe stealing Isaac’s thunder, part of her is drawing parallels between Ray adopting Ryan and Leonard claiming Isaac as his even though he’s biologically Ray’s, and part of her knows none of this is Ryan’s fault. “I refuse to be Catelyn Stark about this,” she says firmly.

Felicity nudges Lilith’s shoulder with hers in a sincere attempt to cheer her up. “At least Ryan isn’t Ray’s illegitimate son who may or may not actually be his illegitimate nephew and secretly a Targaryen,” she points out.

“Yup,” Lilith nudges back as she laughs into her cupped palm. “So,” she leans against Felicity’s shoulder as she looks at Caitlin, “how’s Elaine?”

Caitlin presses her lips together in a thin line. “Of course you know,” she sighs, “you probably knew before I did.”

“There are no guarantees,” Lilith shrugs with her other shoulder, hunching it to meet her earlobe. “Not even with precognition. I could’ve been wrong,” she yawns through the word _been_ , “but apparently I wasn’t.”

“Wait,” Iris holds up one hand. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Ronnie and I have been married for almost two years,” Caitlin begins, “and last year we started trying to get pregnant. When we couldn’t,” her voice pitches higher on the word _couldn’t_ , “we went to see multiple fertility specialists, but they couldn’t tell us what exactly was going wrong.” Felicity reaches out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Iris curls her fingers over her knee. Caitlin smiles before she continues. “I started testing samples of my eggs and Ronnie’s sperm to see if I could facilitate oogamy through _in vitro_ fertilization—”

“Wait,” Iris squeezes her knee gently. “What’s oogamy?”

“It’s a subtype of anisogamy, which in turn is a type of sexual reproduction in which an immotile female ovum merges with a motile spermatozoon,” Caitlin explains. “It exists as a subtype unto itself because in certain species the female gamete is significantly larger than the male gamete before they merge to create a zygote. Including humans.”

Felicity bursts into giggles. “What?” she huffs, “spermatozoon is a funny word. Don’t judge me.”

“It is a funny word,” Caitlin covers the hand Felicity put on her shoulder with her own and clings without giving her frostbite. “I realized my powers were keeping me from conceiving—my eggs were literally freezing Ronnie’s sperm to death—but once I figured that out, I tweaked the vaccine and we got pregnant on the first try.”

“Of course you did,” Lilith gives Caitlin’s nose a congratulatory boop, “you’re such an overachiever.”

“Didn’t you get pregnant the first time you had sex with a dude without a condom?” Felicity realizes she thought that out loud after Lilith raises her eyebrows. “Sorry,” she blurts.

“Don’t be,” Lilith shrugs. “I’m not. I graduated college with honors while I was managing chronic pain and using a wheelchair. Hudson was basically inaccessible until I got there but every building on campus has automatic doors and elevators now,” she yawns through the word _building_ , “I never said I wasn’t an overachiever too.”

“Wow,” Iris says, “so you two are both having kids. And so is Lisa. And Julie. And Kathy. Just…” she looks down at the faded blue denim covering her own knees. “Wow.”

“And Roy,” Felicity chimes in. “Jade is due in August, hence how active the Red Hood has been lately.”

Felicity and Caitlin eventually go questing for snacks. “So,” Lilith turns and looks at Iris once they’re alone in her bedroom, “do you want to talk about whatever was lurking underneath your loaded wowing before?”

“Eddie wants to have kids and I don’t,” Iris sighs, “not yet. I’m still a cub reporter and we can’t even afford a house and I’m just not ready to be a mom right now.”

“Okay,” Lilith says gently, “is he pressuring you?”

“No,” Iris shakes her head so her hair bounces over her shoulders, “but he keeps dropping hints, and now it just feels like everyone we know is procreating except for me—”

“Iris,” Lilith takes her hand and squeezes her fingers, “dropping excessive hints is pressure. I know you love Eddie, but you don’t owe him anything. Especially not your gametes.”

Iris doubles over and clutches Lilith’s hand as she heaves with laughter. “Oh my god,” she wheezes, “you’re my favorite, you know that?”

“Yup,” Lilith wonders if the smile unfurling at the corners of her mouth is an appropriate response to this conversation, “you’re my favorite too. Also, you don’t have to get pregnant if you don’t want to,” her tone metamorphoses into something ferocious, “not now, or ever.”

Iris wipes away one single perfect tear before she leans her forehead against the curve of Lilith’s shoulder. Lilith puts her other arm over Iris’s shoulders and strokes her thumb over the space between Iris’s shoulder blades through the fabric of her shirt.

“Hey guys,” Felicity returns with a makeshift platter of beverages precariously balanced in her hands, “we ordered pizza—” then she notices the platonic cuddling and asks: “Iris, are you okay?”

“I’m good,” Iris says, “is there coffee?”

Felicity nods and puts the tray on the bedside table so she can hand Iris a mug. “I don’t make coffee for just anyone,” she informs them loftily. “I straight up refused to make coffee for Oliver, and I was in love with him at the time.”

“I made coffee for Oliver before,” Iris reminds her, “when I still worked at Jitters.”

“I know,” Felicity smiles at her over the rim of her mug before she sips her own coffee, “I was there.”

Lilith holds her mug of hot chocolate over the dome of her belly as she eats a spoonful of the whipped cream on top. “Didn’t you tell me Oliver was number two on your list of three guys you’re allowed to cheat on Eddie with?”

Felicity laughs so hard coffee actually comes out her nose.

* * *

Lilith feels her water break on the penultimate day of April, eleven days before her due date. Which is anticlimactic because it’s less a flood and more a slow trickle of amniotic fluid down her thighs. “Ray,” she gently pokes his shoulder and he smiles at her when he looks up from the screen of his tablet, “don’t freak out, but I think my water just broke.”

“Wait, what?” Ray flails and almost lets his tablet slip off their bed. Lilith grabs the USB cable attached to it and pulls the device to safety.

“I said don’t freak out!” she holds up her hands as if to say _calm down_. “I probably won’t escalate from early labor to active labor for hours. I need you to get me a clean pair of underwear and a maxi pad or many because I’m going to be leaking until delivery.”

To his credit, he doesn’t look grossed out by how weird her body is right now. Instead he puts his hands on her face and kisses her triumphantly. “I’m going to be a dad!” Ray grins at her, then presses their knuckles together in a celebratory fistbump before he goes to get what she asked for. Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ , then unplugs her phone from the charger and dials Leonard.

Lisa answers his phone. “Hey, Lil.”

“Is your brother too drunk to pick up?” Lilith wants to know.

“No,” Lisa scoffs, “Lenny is playing pool. I’m eating the largest order of fries on the planet and wondering what I’m doing at a bar when I can’t drink.”

Lilith breathes through a mild contraction. Ray helps her change her underwear and whispers _I’m going to pack our bags_ in her other ear before he leaves their bedroom. “Is he winning?”

Lisa takes a sip of something nonalcoholic through a straw before she retorts: “probably.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the vowel sound awkwardly, “could you please tell him that my water just broke?”

Lisa spits a mouthful of water onto the bar. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” Lilith pops the _p_ sound, “I thought he should know.”

“Shouldn’t you be on your way to the hospital?” Lisa’s tone is actually concerned.

“No,” Lilith smiles only because she knows Lisa can’t see her. If they were having this conversation in person, a public display of genuine affection would make her aggressively uncomfortable.

Lisa makes an indignant noise in the background after Leonard steals his phone back from his sister. “Hello, Lilith.”

“Hi,” Lilith tucks her hair behind her ear and wishes he was there to braid it for her. “Len, my water just broke.” Leonard hangs up on her just before Shawna teleports into their bedroom with him. “Hey,” Lilith waves to Shawna as Leonard sits on their bed next to her. “How’s med school?”

“I’m taking a genetics class.” Shawna folds her arms and cocks her hip, “did Caitlin tell you about the research proposal I submitted to S. T. A. R. Labs?”

Lilith nods. “You want to cure Huntington’s disease using gene therapy to reduce the number of CAG trinucleotide repeats in people with the HTT alleles before they’re affected by HD.”

Shawna arches one eyebrow at that. “I thought you were an art major.”

“Yup,” Lilith winces as her back twinges, “but Patty is a forensic blood analyst. I helped her study all through college while she was double majoring in microbiology and criminal justice.”

“Lil,” Shawna ignores the pointed glance Leonard gives her that says _go away_ without saying anything at all, “do you need me to take you guys to the hospital?”

“Thank you,” Lilith smiles without showing her teeth, “but I think we’re going to keep up the pretense that I’m not a metahuman having a telepathic baby and drive.”

Shawna shrugs and her chandelier earrings clink softly over her shoulders before she teleports out.

“Lilith,” Leonard says her name fervently and his hands hover over her like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “What do you need?”

“Ray is packing the bags,” Lilith inhales sharply and breathes through another contraction, “could you braid my hair?”

“Yes,” Leonard gives her a soft, genuine smile and leans in to kiss her temple. “I can do that for you.”

Lilith’s contractions progress from mild and moderate to more intense over the next hour. Ray finally convinces her to go to the hospital when it gets hard for her to breathe. Once she’s hooked up to an IV and has the epidural, she calms down enough to make sense of her visions. “Isaac is facing the wrong way,” she huffs to one of the nurses, “please tell my doctor to confirm it so they can book an OR and do a cesarean.” When the nurse leaves the room, Lilith takes her engagement ring off and hands it back to Ray. “I probably should’ve left it at home,” she says, “but I didn’t want to take it off. I want you to put it right back where it belongs after this.”

“Yeah,” Ray takes her hand to kiss her knuckles like a promise, “and then you’re never taking it off again.”

Lilith breathes through another contraction. “I don’t want either of you in the operating room,” she informs them. Leonard opens his mouth to argue. “Len,” she swallows thickly, “please. I don’t want you to watch them cut me open.”

When her doctor confirms that Isaac is breech, they unhook Lilith from the IV drip and inject her with anesthesia. Leonard squeezes Ray’s hand too hard as they wheel her away to the operating room.

“Cool it,” Ray smiles halfheartedly at him.

Leonard gives him an incredulous look. “Are you teasing me?”

“Yeah,” Ray arches his eyebrows and cocks his head like a challenge. “Yeah, I am.”

Leonard twists one hand into Ray’s hair and pulls him into a desperate kiss, tugging his bottom lip between his teeth before he pulls away to breathe. “I hate this,” Leonard exhales a frustrated sigh, “not being able to do anything for her.”

Ray heaves a sigh of his own after he presses their foreheads together. “I know,” he whispers, “me too.”

Lilith wakes up in post-op and freaks out because she can’t feel Isaac in her head anymore. Leonard takes her left hand in both of his to keep her from ripping out her IV by accident. “Lilith,” he actually has the nerve to laugh as one of the nurses gives her a cup of ice chips, “calm down.”

“Isaac,” Lilith rasps after she breaks the ice with her teeth. “Len, where the hell is my son?”

“Lil,” Ray carefully rises from a chair by the door to her private room to avoid jostling the infant in his arms, “don’t freak out, he’s right here.”

Leonard takes his hands off her and holds the cup of ice chips as Ray hands their son to her. Lilith gently nuzzles Isaac’s tiny nose with hers.

 _Hi mom_ , his telepathic voice sounds different now that they’re not sharing a blood supply. Which makes her wonder how different his actual voice will sound when he learns to talk.

Lilith notices that his eyes aren’t blue or grey; they’re a soft, warm brown like Ray’s, just like she knew they would be. “Hi,” she swallows thickly. “I love you so much.”

 _I love you too_ , Isaac thinks, _it’s cool to finally see you with my own eyes_.

* * *

**May 2017**

* * *

Lilith spends four days in the hospital after her cesarean. Cisco spends day one watching the extended editions of _The Hobbit_ trilogy with her, Leonard, Ray, and Lisa. When her milk comes in on day two, she starts pumping her breasts to avoid the pain of engorgement after she feeds Isaac for the first time. Iris brings her fries from Big Belly Burger on day three. When she finally goes home on day four after her doctor removes her staples, the first thing she does is take a bath in the Jacuzzi.

Lilith doesn’t leave the house again until her postpartum checkup two weeks later, during which the doctor tells her that depression is a totally normal response in the aftermath of pregnancy. There is a stretch of time where everything smells like spit up and used diapers and nothing is clean. It’s hard to have Ray and Leonard there constantly, but Lilith adapts. By the last week of May she starts feeling more like herself again: her uterus reconfigures itself, she stops breastfeeding Isaac, her milk dries up, she takes her meds, and her moods re-stabilize.

Of course that’s when her biological mother shows up.

Lilith takes one look at the security feed and blurts: “oh hell no.”

Ray strokes his palm over the curve of her spine. “So,” he leans in to whisper conspiratorially in her ear, “how is your plan to avoid her until she dies going?”

“Shut up,” Lilith retorts, “my plan is still feasible if we don’t let her in.”

Leonard puts one hand on Ray’s shoulder and tilts Lilith’s chin up with the other to kiss her hard enough to coax a soft pleasure noise from her throat. When he breaks the kiss, Leonard strokes his thumb over her flushed cheek. “I missed this,” he says.

“What?” Lilith wants to know.

Leonard smirks. “You,” he says in a low voice, “blushing for me.”

Which in turn makes her blush harder. “Rude,” she huffs. “I can’t have sex again for two more weeks.”

“I know,” Leonard exhales a melodramatic sigh before he opens the gate.

“The hell,” Lilith deadpans.

“What are you doing?” Ray wants to know.

Leonard tilts his head to look at the woman on the screen. “I’m going to ask Vicki Vale what she wants,” he says in a deceptively calm voice. With that, he straps the holster that holds his cold gun to his thigh.

Ray arches his eyebrows. “Why do you need the cold gun?”

“I don’t want you to shoot her,” Lilith informs him.

“Then I promise not to shoot her.” Leonard pulls on his coat and extracts his goggles from his pocket before he puts them on, “but she doesn’t need to know that.” With that, he makes a dramatic exit through the front door.

Vicki is a few inches taller than Lilith without shoes, but the height difference becomes significant with the application of stiletto heels. Leonard notices the hair first, titian silk that froths into frizzy curls when exposed to heat. Now he can see where Lilith got the green in her eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the set of her jaw, the curve of her lips. It’s odd to look at someone who resembles the woman he loves so much and feel nothing but annoyed.

When she smiles at him, Vicki shows her teeth like a predator. “Captain Cold, I presume.”

Leonard nods. “I’m not here as Captain Cold,” he says in his smoothest voice. “I am here as Leonard Snart, a man who loves your…” he pauses for effect, “niece.”

Vicki arches one perfect eyebrow as she notices the streaks of silver in his dark hair. “Aren’t you a little old for Lilith?”

Leonard tilts his head and his lips curl in a nonverbal _there is a slight possibility, but I couldn’t care less_. Then he shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter,” he says smugly, “she chose me. I never pushed her into anything.”

Vicki scrunches her mouth in an eerily familiar way that means she’s gnawing on the inside of her cheek before she asks: “How is she?”

“Lilith just had a baby,” Leonard says flatly, “she doesn’t have the spoons to see you right now.”

“I wouldn’t have come here in person if Dr. Palmer had agreed to do the interview I requested through the PR department at S. T. A. R. Labs,” Vicki huffs, “everyone wants to know what’s going on with you three and I want the exclusive. Lilith made it personal by refusing,” she squares her shoulders. “Well, if she wants my attention, she’s got it.”

Leonard chuckles low in his throat. “Lilith doesn’t want attention from you,” he says, “she wants you to love her.”

“I do,” Vicki says firmly, “but I love myself a lot more. I know what people think of me, but I didn’t win a Pulitzer for my looks. I’m very good at what I do. I wouldn’t be where I am if I tried to be a single mom at nineteen. I don’t regret giving her to Addie,” her voice softens, “but I don’t regret giving birth to her either.”

“Then say that to her,” Leonard sighs because he didn’t plan on Vicki getting her feelings all over him. “I wanted to shoot you,” he informs her, “she told me not to.”

“Well,” Vicki deadpans, “that’s something.”


	8. You Will Remember Me for Centuries

**I know exactly who I am,**  
**what I am.**  
**I could name every star**  
**exploding in this universe of a body.**  
**It’s just that there are many different versions**  
**of me, and they don’t always play nice.**  
**It’s just that I was never satisfied with**  
**being one thing;**  
**I wanted to fit the entire world under my skin,**  
**but I never learned the balancing act.**  
**I wanted light and dark.**

Emily Palermo, “Rot Rot Rot” _  
_

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
 **Part 7**  
You Will Remember Me for Centuries

* * *

**June 2017**

* * *

Project Slipshift begins after Lilith recovers from her cesarean. A. R. G. U. S. agents and scientists take over the facilities on Level 300 where she processes her visions. Lilith doesn’t let A. R. G. U. S. know she hasn’t needed technological assistance to make sense of hypertime for a long time. Or that the only reason she still uses the neural uplink is because the ability to perceive something isn’t necessarily the ability to understand it. Luckily her people all bring something unique to the table, superpowers and skill sets alike. Which means they can fill in the gaps for her, probably. Hence the database Ray, Felicity, and Cisco built, coded, and encrypted with her in mind.

Along with Steve acting as liaison between A. R. G. U. S. and their team, the project includes: Etta Candy, his secretary and a special agent in her own right; Kala Avasti, a physicist who specializes in string theory; Albert Michaels, a neurologist and Lyla’s cousin from Metropolis; Thomas Morrow, a roboticist; Kimiyo Hoshi, a geneticist; and her ex-husband Murray Takamoto, a mechanical engineer.

Kimiyo takes samples of her blood and saliva. Then she tries to convince her that cerebrospinal fluid may help her learn more about her powers.

“No,” Leonard snarls with one hand on his cold gun.

“I could perform the lumbar puncture here at S. T. A. R. Labs,” Kimiyo protests, “and Dr. Raymond or Mr. Allen or Ms. Spivot could run the tests.”

“I’m not letting you stick a ginormous needle in my spine,” Lilith says firmly. “There is not enough no in the world.”

Albert tells her to get another MRI—she went in for the last one after the particle accelerator exploded almost four years ago, when she thought her visions might be symptomatic of a brain tumor instead of a telltale sign of emergent superpowers—before he maps her brain through magnetoencephalography and informs her that he wants to scan her cerebral cortex with EROS technology once the machine he requisitioned for the project arrives. Ray geeks out about that with Caitlin and Cisco while she sits underneath the MEG machine. Lilith makes a garbled noise in her throat when they start throwing around words like “myelinated axons” and “connectogram” and “fractional anisotropy” because her knowledge of neuroscience and neuroimaging in particular is nonexistent.

Lilith corners Steve before she leaves for the day and says: “I know the real endgame of this project isn’t to neutralize me as a potential threat, and it’s the same reason you haven’t killed me yet. A. R. G. U. S. wants to replicate my abilities, then use them to avert historical manmade atrocities like 9/11 and whatnot.”

To his credit, Steve doesn’t even try to deny it. Instead he sighs. “Of course you know,” he forces himself to meet her gaze, “you’re very perceptive even without your powers, Miss Clay.”

“I’m telling you it won’t end well,” Lilith yawns through the word _end_. “Also the laws of causality loops mean you’re not going to achieve that endgame, because if you pulled it off in the future then we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the present. Maybe it’ll happen in another timeline,” she holds his gaze so he can see how serious she is, “but never ours. This reality is _mine_. I don’t want to remake the world in my image, but I won’t let you play god either.”

Steve nods, his jaw set. Lilith squares her shoulders before she hobbles to the elevator, like Atlas trying to shrug off the weight of the world.

* * *

Leonard stops touching her eleven days before Lilith can start having sex again. If he puts his hands on her when they’re asleep, she doesn’t know it because he always wakes up before she does. On the bright side, having two babies in the house apparently cures insomnia. On the darker side, Leonard has apparently decided to cope with not having her sexually by withholding nonsexual intimacy from her. Lilith knows he probably isn’t doing this to hurt her—he’s just doing what he did before when he was planning to seduce his way into what she had with Ray and giving her space—but it’s making her insecure and exacerbating her anxiety.

Lilith rolls her eyes when he actually gets up to leave the great room while she’s eating clementines because watching her suck the juice out of the individual slices and spit the dregs into a mug is overwhelming. “I don’t have the heart to make another cold shower joke,” she huffs and drops the truth bomb: “I can have sex again.”

“Not for three more days,” Leonard folds his arms before he clenches his jaw around the word _more_. “I’ve been counting the seconds.”

“When are you counting from, exactly?” she wants to know, “the day Isaac was born or the day I left the hospital? If it’s the latter, you’re wrong.” Lilith doesn’t bother to peel another clementine because she doesn’t need to be precognitive to know what he’s going to do next. “Len,” she raises her eyebrows like a challenge, “I can have sex today.”

Leonard keeps his arms folded and does everything in his power to stop himself from jumping her bones. He briefly considers flipping the table, but ultimately decides not to attempt that because Lilith would probably make him put it back the way it was before she let him touch her. “But do you want to?” he asks.

“I do.” Lilith rises to her feet using the edge of the table for balance. “I’m wearing the garter belt you like,” she forces herself to look him in the eyes as she elaborates, “the black one with the triangle straps.”

Leonard leans back against the table and looks at her with enough heat in his gaze to make her squirm. “Show me,” he says in a low voice.

Lilith doesn’t bother to take anything off. Instead she curls her fingers over the hem of her dress and lifts it slowly without breaking eye contact. “Len,” she says after his gaze flicks down her body and he hums in appreciation, “I want you to touch me.” Then as an afterthought, she blurts: “If you want to.”

Leonard unzips her dress with one hand and pulls it down with the other so it falls in a puddle of fabric to the floor. Then he lifts her onto the table effortlessly. Which is still the hottest thing. “Lilith,” he says in his smoothest voice, “wanting to touch you wasn’t the problem.”

“What is?” Lilith wants to know.

“You were depressed,” Leonard sighs. “You needed space. Which wasn’t a problem,” he puts his palms flat on the tabletop and leans over her. “I just didn’t want to make things more difficult by focusing on my dick.”

Lilith cackles and covers her mouth with her cupped palms. Leonard chuckles low in his throat and heat coils between her thighs because she’s close enough to feel his laughter move through his belly. “So,” she wheezes, “was Ray not enough in the meantime?”

Leonard scoffs because that’s impossible. “I love you both in different ways,” he takes his hands off the table and pulls his shirt over his head before he leans in again to whisper in her ear, “I want you in different ways too.” With that, he twists one hand into her hair and lays her down on the tabletop. Then he gently bites her earlobe, his fingers pressing into the back of her neck just hard enough to make her breath catch.

“Len,” she curls her fingers over his bare shoulder and moans when he scrapes his teeth over the tattoo behind her ear. “I know you probably haven’t done certain things you like in almost three months,” she digs her nails into his shoulder when he moves his mouth to her neck and feels his smirk against her skin followed by the heat of his breath, “you don’t have to hold back.”

“I don’t plan to.” Leonard moves his other hand from her back to tug down the cup of her bra just enough to flick his tongue over her nipple. Then he uses his hand to lift her breast and suck her nipple into his mouth. Once the nub is hard, he blows a puff of cool air over her nipple and strokes it with his thumb. Lilith makes a high noise in her throat and gnaws on her lower lip to avoid making too much noise as he moves his mouth to the top of her breast and sinks his teeth into her. Leonard untangles his other hand from her hair to palm her other breast and flick her other nipple with his fingertips. Lilith clings to his shoulders as her hips jerk forward without her permission. Leonard licks and sucks the skin he used his teeth on before he props himself up on his elbows to grin at her. “Let’s see how wet you are, hmm?” he hooks his fingers over the waistband of her panties and pulls them down slowly.

Lilith breaks eye contact because the garter belt he likes best doesn’t cover the incision from her cesarean and it stands out against the pale freckled skin of her belly. Leonard maps the dark pink slub of scar tissue with his thumb before he puts his hands on her waist to hold her down and sinks his teeth into the flesh of her left hip. Lilith moans out loud after he leaves his second mark and blows another puff of cool air over her slit. “Rude,” she huffs.

Leonard shrugs. “Ray should be home soon with the condoms we put on the grocery list,” he spreads her legs further apart, “but in the meantime—”

Lilith belatedly renegotiates her bare breasts back into the confines of her bra before she sits up so they won’t ooze everywhere. “I want to blow you before you eat me out,” she informs him. “I took my meds and used the nanotech earlier so I could get down on my knees. If you want.”

“ _Yes_.” Leonard stands in one smooth motion and bends down to twist his hand into her hair again before he kisses her. Lilith unbuttons his fly and wraps one hand around him while she bites his bottom lip hard enough to make him moan. Leonard groans louder when she starts moving her hand and kisses the corner of his lips, his chin, his jawline, before she licks and sucks the hollow under his jaw. Then she gently tugs his earlobe between her teeth like he did to her earlier and caresses his balls with the fingers of her other hand.

“Len,” she whispers in his ear, “we need to switch places if you want me to suck you off.”

Leonard kicks his pants off before he lifts her up and turns so he’s leaning back against the edge of the table. Lilith gently bites his left nipple after her stocking feet touch the floor and drags her thumbs over his hipbones as she kneels. This is going to hurt later when her meds and Ray’s nanotech wear off, but the noise Leonard makes when she flicks her tongue over the head of his dick is worth it. Lilith licks and sucks her way up and down his dick before she finally takes him into the heat her mouth. Then she slides one hand between her legs and slicks one finger up so she can slip it into his ass.

When he comes, he fists one hand in her hair and exhales a hoarse “ _Lil_.” Leonard only calls her by her nickname in the rare moments he gets too overwhelmed for polysyllables. Which makes her proud whenever he loses control for her.

Lilith swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her other hand before she slides her finger out of his ass to lick it clean. “I guess you owe me one now,” she grins up at him.

“I don’t keep score with you,” Leonard informs her roughly.

“That’s good,” Lilith deadpans as he gently pulls her to her feet by the hair, “because if the game is who gives more orgasms to whom you would totally win—”

Leonard kisses her and tastes himself on her tongue while he stops her mouth with his. When he breaks the kiss, he presses their foreheads together. “This isn’t a game to me,” he says softly. “It never was.” What he means is, _I love you_.

Lilith smooths her hands from his shoulders to his face and strokes her thumbs over his cheekbones as her fingers curl against his neck. “I love you too,” she nuzzles his nose with hers as he untangles his hand from her hair so he can lift her back onto the table before he gets on his knees.

Leonard smooths his hands over the sheer fabric of her stockings from the underside of her thighs to the hollow behind her knees. Lilith flops back onto the tabletop as he spreads her legs wider. Leonard kisses along the exposed skin of her inner thighs, using his teeth and tongue on the sensitive flesh until she begs him softly for more. Lilith makes a high noise in her throat at the first stroke of his tongue and clings to the curve of his skull with her fingers. When he buries his face between her legs to lick and suck at the folds of her cunt, her toes curl as she scrapes her nails through his short hair. When his ensuing hum shudders along his jaw, it goes through her so hard her hips jerk against his face. Leonard pulls back to flick his tongue along the length of her slit over and over before he finally presses his mouth over her clit, gently tugs it between his teeth, and _sucks_. When she comes, she flails and knocks the mesh bag of clementines off the table. Leonard chuckles low in his throat as the fruit hits the floor and his breath on her is enough to make her squirm again.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “Are you done?”

“No.” Leonard kisses the freckled skin of her thigh just above the lace trim of her stocking before he slips one long finger into her to feel her clench around it.

When her hips snap forward again so hard she actually bounces on the tabletop, Lilith squawks and covers her mouth with her cupped palms. Then she uncovers her mouth to sweep her sweaty bangs off her forehead. “ _Len_ ,” she moans.

“Yes?” Leonard adds a second finger and crooks them to find a place inside her that provokes a pleasure noise so loud she covers her mouth again.

“Ray,” Lilith tries and fails to swallow a shrill noise after he flicks the rough pad of his thumb over her clit, “he’s home.”

“Good,” Leonard says before he sinks his teeth into her thigh. Then he strokes his fingers inside her and circles his thumb over her clit until she unspools again during the making of his third mark.

Ray opens the door and raises his eyebrows at them, but he manages not to drop the grocery bags in his arms. “I take it you told Len he was counting wrong,” he ducks his head and grins crookedly.

“Why didn’t you tell me, hmm?” Leonard wants to know.

Ray cocks his head as his grin turns sheepish. “I thought it’d be a nice surprise,” his gaze lingers on Leonard standing with his dick half-hard between his legs before he looks at Lilith spread open on the table with her thighs slick and shiny in the harsh daylight, “and it looks like I was right.”

“Yes,” Leonard smirks. “Thank you.”

“Yup,” Lilith smiles at Ray as she props herself up on her elbows, “do you need help with the groceries?”

“Not if it means either of you putting your clothes back on.” Ray says this with such vehemence that Leonard exhales a triumphant laugh and puts one hand on the edge of the table to withstand the tremor passing through his shoulders.

Lilith closes her eyes. “Okay,” she says, “but there are diapers that need to be changed upstairs and I don’t have the spoons for a staircase right now.”

Leonard exhales a melodramatic sigh as he puts his pants back on. Ray actually pouts before he goes to put the grocery bags in the kitchen. Lilith finds her dress under the table and pulls it back over her head without bothering to look for her panties. Leonard took them off while his pants were still on; she doesn’t need to be precognitive to know they’re probably in his back pocket.

Lilith hobbles into the kitchen after she picks up the clementines and leans against the counter. “Ray,” she opens the fridge to put a carton of eggs and a package of bacon inside, “zip me up, please?”

Ray shuts the cabinet he was putting a new jar of peanut butter in and circles the island. Instead of doing what she asked, he closes the fridge with one hand and wraps his other arm tight around her waist. “Hey,” his grin unfurls again as he gives her a hug.

Lilith tips her head back to look up at him as her smile returns with a vengeance. “Hi,” she says softly.

Ray cups her face and leans down to kiss her. It turns filthy quick. Lilith raises one arm to curl her fingers into his hair, puts her other hand flat over the cold metal of the refrigerator door, and moves her hips back to facilitate the slow grind of his dick against her ass. Ray holds her with his whole body, his torso curved over her back while his other hand scoops under her dress to prove his extemporaneous hypothesis that she isn’t wearing panties correct.

“Lil,” Ray makes a strangled noise in his throat and breaks the kiss, “you’re really wet. Len does good work.”

“Yup.” Lilith squirms as his fingers caress her lightly. Ray doesn’t touch her clit because he knows her well enough not to make the inevitable oversensitivity in the aftermath of her orgasms worse. Instead he strokes one finger into her slit and swirls his fingertip over her hole. Lilith exhales a shrill noise she refuses to call a whimper as her knees buckle. “Okay,” she enunciates the _oh_ sound and tries to regain her equilibrium, “aren’t there other groceries in the car you need to bring inside?”

“Yeah,” Ray sounds very pleased with himself, “the box of condoms is still in the car. I should probably stop until I can finish what I start without getting you pregnant again.”

“Oh my god,” Lilith buries her face in her hands. Ray gives her a gentle squeeze before he takes his hands off her. Lilith wobbles in his absence until she uses the counter for balance and exhales another soft _woo_.

Leonard doesn’t bother to put his shirt back on after he finishes dealing with the diaper situation, but he does help Ray bring the rest of the groceries into the kitchen. Then he backs him into the counter, twists one hand into his hair, and cups his dick through his jeans with the other. Lilith stops putting away groceries and sits on a stool by the island to watch Ray put both his hands on Leonard’s face and slip his tongue into his mouth.

When he pulls Lilith’s panties out of Leonard’s back pocket, Ray breaks the kiss to grin at her again. “I bought these for you,” his grin turns cocky as his brown eyes get darker, “you wore them for me.”

Lilith nods as a fresh blush creeps over her cheeks and clavicle. Leonard stops kissing, licking, and sucking down the column of Ray’s neck after scraping his teeth over Ray’s throat provokes a stuttering groan. “Lilith,” Leonard says her name in a low voice, his breath warm on Ray’s skin. “How’s your knee?”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Lilith shrugs with one shoulder. “Why?”

“Well,” Leonard turns his head to smirk at her, “because I want to fuck you from behind while you suck Ray’s dick.”

“Okay,” Lilith blushes harder, “but we should probably do that in our bedroom after we finish putting the groceries away so nothing goes bad. Also,” she holds her hand out to Ray, “I want my panties back.”

Ray shakes his head before he belatedly starts putting away the groceries again. “No way,” he says, his grin widening to showcase his teeth.

At the same time, Leonard says: “No.”

Lilith sighs. “At least we live in the same house now so when you steal my panties they end up back in my underwear drawer eventually.”

“When did you steal her panties before?” Ray wants to know.

Leonard smirks again. When he folds his arms over his bare chest, his long fingers curl over his elbows. “Which time?”

“Oh my god,” Lilith buries her face in her hands, “do I want to know what you did with them before I got them back?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Leonard informs her, “that wasn’t the point.”

Lilith peers at him through the gaps between her fingers. “Then what was?” she asks.

“You,” Leonard says smugly, “seeking me out to get them back and thinking about me in the meantime.”

Lilith doesn’t know how she feels about that. “You didn’t have to manipulate me,” she says, her tone bordering on accusatory.

Leonard shrugs. “I could see that you had feelings for each other before. I wanted you to think about me instead of him.” Which didn’t go according to plan, but he doesn’t regret how things worked out. “What I don’t know,” Leonard tilts his head to look at Ray, “is why you never made a move on her.”

Ray would’ve been on the rebound at first because he met Lilith after everything with Felicity and Oliver was still fresh. Then she was with Leonard and he didn’t know whether they were exclusive or not, but whatever else he wanted from her might’ve ruined their friendship and that was unacceptable. When she was heartbroken after Leonard left, he told himself he didn’t want to be her rebound either. Then he realized he could’ve lost her before he ever had her and went for it. “I made things out to be infinitely more complicated than they really were,” Ray explains, “I do that sometimes.”

Lilith uses one hand to unseat herself from the stool. Then she reaches out for Leonard with one arm while she wraps the other around Ray’s waist. When he takes her hand, she pulls Leonard into their embrace.

“Okay,” she winces as the bruises Leonard left on her in the shape of his teeth start to ache dully. “I need more endorphins if you’re planning to bite me again.” Which she knows he will, because whenever he fucks her from behind Leonard always sinks his teeth into the space between her neck and shoulder when he comes, even if he didn’t bite her as hard as he can during the foreplay.

“You bit her?” Ray doesn’t indulge the biting kink, but he’s watched Leonard use his teeth on Lilith; it’s not his jam, but it doesn’t bother him like it did at first, now that he knows how enthusiastically she consents to it firsthand. “Where?”

Leonard takes his left hand off Ray’s shoulder and uses the arm crooked around Lilith’s shoulders to hold her where he wants her while he lifts the hem of her dress. “Here,” he lifts her skirt to show Ray the bite on the inside of her thigh. “Here, and,” Leonard lifts her skirt higher to show Ray the bruise on her hip before he lets go of the hem and pulls her collar down to show him the mark visible above the cup of her bra. “Here.”

“Why are you wearing a bra at all?” Ray wants to know, because she doesn’t bother to wear one when she has no plans to leave the house.

Lilith blushes all over again. “Well,” she elongates the _l_ sound awkwardly, “it matches the panties. I wore it for you.”

“I’m not complaining,” Ray assures her, “but you’re wearing Len’s favorite garter belt and lingerie I bought for you. Why?”

Lilith gnaws on the inside of her cheek before she explains. “I gained weight,” she informs the kitchen floor. “Which is a thing that happens during pregnancy so it didn’t bother me until Len stopped touching me and I thought—”

Leonard tilts her face up and holds her gaze. “I love every part of you,” his voice turns rough, “how do you not know that?”

“I know my insecurities have nothing to do with you,” Lilith unclenches her shoulders as Ray strokes his palm along the curve of her spine, “but you should know my anxiety isn’t rational.”

Leonard sighs. “This is another thing I can’t fix with sex,” he deduces.

“Yup,” Lilith boops him on the nose, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t have more sex right now.” Then she rescues her panties from the island where Ray left them and hobbles toward their bedroom.

Ray ends up sitting naked with his back against the pillows, his legs spread and his knees bent so his feet are flat against the mattress. Lilith ends up on her knees in front of him with her head in his lap and her ass in the air. She’s still wearing the garter belt and stockings, but her bra and panties were banished the laundry basket in the corner. Leonard takes his pants off again before he kneels behind her. Lilith turns and looks at him over her shoulder to watch him tear the foil packet with his teeth and roll the condom on. Then he fists one hand around the base of his dick to guide the head between her legs. Lilith wraps one hand around Ray’s dick to move it sideways so she can nuzzle his balls with her nose before she licks and sucks them.

“Lil,” Ray says in a hoarse voice as his eyes flick slowly from her face to her bare breasts and back again, “would it hurt for you to—”

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know what he wants or that he’s worried it might hurt her because of the bruise Leonard left in her cleavage. “No,” she says. Then she proves it by lifting her breasts to press his dick between them, playing with her own nipples as she swirls her tongue over the head of him and tastes his precome.

Leonard curls his fingers over her hips before he pushes inside her slowly, taking his time. “Lilith,” he tilts his head and looks at Ray while he moves in and out of her, “you’re perfect. I love how soft you are. I love your freckles, how easily you blush and bruise, your pretty pink nipples, the sweet taste of your _cunt_ —” he clenches his jaw when her hips buck under him. Lilith wants to scoff because she knows how she tastes and it’s not sweet at all, but the thick slide of him inside her is distracting. Ray groans and grinds between her breasts as she sucks on the head of his dick. “Ray,” Leonard says roughly, “I want you to come on her breasts.”

“What,” Lilith squawks and lets Ray slip out of her mouth with a wet pop, “no. _Len_ ,” she moans with a thread of indignation when Leonard pulls out until just the head of his dick is inside her before he slides into her again. “That’s too—” she bites the inside of her cheek when he smooths one hand over her belly to roll her clit between his fingertips, “—messy.”

“Then we’ll just have to lick you clean,” Leonard grins at Ray, “won’t we?”

Lilith tilts her head to look up at Ray, who nods so fast he discombobulates himself. “Okay,” she stretches the _y_ sound out as she makes a high noise in her throat, “promise?”

“I promise,” Leonard leans down to whisper in her ear, “and I always keep my promises.”

Ray curls his fingers into her hair as he comes between her breasts with a deliciously breathless noise. Leonard keeps fingering her clit while he drags his teeth over the space between her neck and shoulder. Then he loses control when she clenches around him and fucks her so hard she braces herself against Ray’s stomach as pleasure throbs between her legs. Lilith is breathing through the aftermath of her third orgasm when Leonard comes and bites her again before he pulls out to throw the used condom away. Then she flops back against the pillows and exhales another soft _woo_. Ray strokes his thumb over her cheek and leans in to kiss her sweetly, a nonverbal _I love you_.

Leonard splays one hand over her stomach and licks from her sternum to the underside of her breast. Ray buries his face in her cleavage to lick up most of his mess before he puts his hand between her legs and cups her gently. “Lil,” he says after he swallows, “are you too oversensitive to come again for me?”

“No.” Lilith tries and fails to ignore how sticky her skin is with sweat and other things, “but can I take a shower first? I feel gross,” her nose scrunches as she elaborates, “but satisfied. Which is weird.”

“Well,” Leonard unhooks the straps from her thigh-highs and pulls the garter belt gently over her legs. “I’m not satisfied,” he smirks as he rolls her stockings down for her because her thighs are trembling with aftershocks, “not even close.”

Ray snorts happily. “You’re insatiable.”

“That’s true.” Leonard shrugs. “How about we all take a bath together instead, hmm?” he suggests, because her shower chair doesn’t make shower sex involving three people any easier.

Lilith curls into herself and yawns before she says, “Hell yeah.”

* * *

Ray has been discouraged from bringing Lilith to work functions in any capacity by the manager of his PR department on multiple occasions. When the woman informs him that Isaac shouldn't attend future work functions because he’s illegitimate, Ray almost fires her over the phone before Lilith leans over the corner of the table and covers his mouth with her palm.

“Isaac is not illegitimate,” Ray says after he hangs up the phone.

Lilith sighs. “Technically he is,” she shrugs, “we’re not married.”

“Yet,” Ray vehemently enunciates the _t_ sound, “and only because you freak out whenever I mention our wedding.”

“I don’t—” Lilith protests.

“Yes you do,” Leonard says without looking up from his laptop.

“Okay,” Lilith waves one hand in his general direction as if to say _shut your face_ , “but that’s not what matters right now. ‘Aunt’ Vicki,” she crooks her fingers like quotation marks around the word _aunt_ , “was right about people wanting to know what’s going on with us. Ray, you managed to resurrect S. T. A. R. Labs from the ashes of a particle accelerator explosion and you’re a conventionally attractive trillionaire philanthropist. Which means you’re in the public eye.” Which is why they haven’t gone out on a real date since they negotiated the whole polyamory thing over a year ago: because the paparazzi tends to show up and make things awkward, irksome, or variations thereupon. “Which in turn means your bottom line has probably been negatively impacted by your relationship with me—”

“I don’t care,” Ray says with such conviction that her heart clenches in her chest, “my work should speak for itself. I want to do good as Ray Palmer and as the Atom, but I’m allowed to want things for myself too. I’m not ashamed of the people I love.”

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “I guess Len isn’t the only person in this relationship who makes winning speeches,” she says softly, “but how you feel about us doesn’t change how this looks to other people. I became a notorious recluse after the tragic injury that destroyed my ballet career turned into a scandal because my biological father is a billionaire playboy,” she yawns through the word _playboy_ , “and the only reason Len hasn’t gotten arrested recently is because he used Barry to pull a _tabula rasa_ before we started dating. Ray, you have the most to lose here: your good work, your income, your secret identity, your mission. I love you so much,” her tone becomes ferocious, “I refuse to be the reason you lose everything that matters to you.”

“So,” Leonard closes his laptop and gives Ray a pointed look as he reaches for Lilith’s hand under the table, “you’re not having second thoughts about getting married.”

“How about no,” Lilith holds Ray’s gaze so he knows she means it as Leonard starts playing with her fingers, “but I don’t need to be precognitive to know the wedding itself is going to be a PR nightmare. Which is why I’m freaked out,” she sighs and clarifies: “the wedding, not marriage.”

Ray intertwines his left hand with her right before he stands and leans over the table to kiss her. Leonard stops playing with Lilith’s fingers to close the circle and cover Ray’s right hand—which is pressed flat on the tabletop—with his left. Ray breaks the kiss to breathe and kisses her temple before he pulls back to look at her. “So,” he elongates the vowel sound, “does this mean we can finally start planning our wedding? I promise to make it as painless as possible.”

“I’m not wearing a white dress,” Lilith says, “but there should be white roses because symbolism—”

Leonard chuckles low in his throat as he remembers the moment during their second date when she explained that supposedly the white roses in the Rossetti painting she was named for symbolize cold, sensuous love. Then she remembered she was talking to a dude who unironically calls himself Captain Cold and blushed everywhere. “‘And still she sits, young while the earth is old, and, subtly by herself contemplative, draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, ’til heart and body and life are in its hold,’” he smirks at her, “‘the rose and poppy are her flowers, for where is he not found, O Lilith’—”

“Okay,” Lilith squawks and takes back her hand in a futile attempt to cover his mouth.

Leonard catches her hand with his and holds it to gently scrape his teeth over the flesh of her palm before he moves his mouth to the inside of her wrist. “You’re blushing,” he says smugly.

“You’re an asshole,” Lilith retorts.

“You love me,” Leonard tilts his head to look up at Ray as he strokes his thumb over the back of Lilith’s hand. “You both do.”

“Yeah,” Ray grins at Leonard as he leans against the edge of the table next to Lilith, “we do. You’re still an asshole.”

Leonard smiles without showing his teeth. He can work with that.

* * *

**July 2017**

* * *

Lilith tells Sandra that she told Mick he couldn’t date her, and the reaction isn’t at all what she expected. Sandra actually gets mad at her for meddling and forbidding Mick to pursue her, so Lilith sends her the file Cisco compiled on him for the Flash’s rogues’ gallery and texts: **Len gave me his number after our first date. I waited three days to call him because he told me he wanted more and I wanted to know what I was getting into. I think you should too.**

Sandra doesn’t text back. Instead she calls Lilith at one in the morning to talk it through after Connor falls asleep. Lilith ends up half on top of Leonard while she reaches for her phone so he wakes up with her breasts in his face. He exhales a melodramatic sigh when she answers the phone and makes a disgruntled noise as she flops back against the pillows. Then he pushes up the hem of her camisole to use her belly as a makeshift pillow of his own. Ray opens his eyes wide and inhales sharply before he wakes up and rolls onto his side to throw one arm over Leonard’s shoulders. Lilith holds the phone with one hand and strokes Ray’s hair with the other.

“Mick burned his farm down,” Sandra whispers.

“No,” Lilith stretches the vowel sound out, “he didn’t set the fire. But he was so into watching it burn that his entire family died while he stood there like an obsessive loser falling in love for the first time.”

Leonard doesn’t need to be precognitive to know that snark is meant for him. Ray presses his lips into a thin line as silent laughter shudders through his shoulders.

Sandra heaves a sigh. “Why the hell am I attracted to a pyromaniacal loser?” she wants to know.

Lilith shrugs before she remembers Sandra can’t see her. “I fell in love with a loser,” she holds the phone between her shoulder and her ear to boop Leonard’s nose, “and it ended pretty well for me. Which doesn’t mean you should date Mick if you don’t want to,” she clarifies because sexual attraction doesn’t necessarily mean people are romantically compatible, “but if you didn’t want to then you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.”

Sandra huffs and mumbles “you’re not wrong,” before she hangs up.

“What would a date with Mick even look like?” Lilith wants to know after she puts the phone back on its charger.

“I don’t know,” Leonard shrugs. “Mick doesn’t really date, unless you count his weekly appointments with the woman he pays to tie him up and pour hot candle wax on him.”

“Okay,” Lilith enunciates the _oh_ sound awkwardly. “Too much information, Len.”

“It’s not like we don’t tie each other up sometimes,” Ray points out.

“I’m not opposed to consensual bondage,” Lilith says, “but that doesn’t mean I need to know about Mick and his domme. It’s none of my business.”

“Speaking of consensual bondage,” Leonard says in his smoothest voice.

“It’s almost two in the morning,” Ray protests halfheartedly.

“Lilith wasn’t asleep,” Leonard caresses her through the fabric of her panties. “It’s her turn.”

Lilith feels the heat crawl up her throat to her cheeks as she remembers the first time he tied her up. Leonard asked, _do you trust me?_ and she answered _yes_ without hesitation. When he lost his cool enough to look flabbergasted and asked _why?_ she said _do you want to hurt me?_ and he said _only if you want me to_. Lilith put her hands above her head with her wrists crossed and said, _that’s why_.

Leonard still isn’t used to people who aren’t Lisa trusting or loving him unconditionally. Isaac calls him _dad_ telepathically and his mental voice resonates with so much trust and love Leonard doesn’t know what to do with himself. Which made him resolve to be the best dad to ever dad. “Lilith,” he stops moving his fingers over her to ask: “are our kids up?”

Lilith closes her eyes. “No,” she says, “not yet.”

“Good,” Leonard turns and looks at Ray, “let me borrow one of your ties, hmm? Lilith told me to give the handcuffs back to the detectives.”

Ray arches his eyebrows in shock before he blurts incredulously: “and you listened?”

“I did,” Leonard smirks. “Lilith was _very_ persuasive.”

“I bribed Len with pegging,” Lilith elaborates.

“So,” Ray gets out of bed to fetch one of his ties from their closet, “that’s what you two do all day while I’m at work?”

“I also nap,” Lilith yawns through the word _nap_. “And read. And hang out with our kids. And cook,” she pulls her camisole over her head because she won’t be able to take it off after Leonard ties her up. “Len cleans. And keeps me company while I hang out with our kids. And plans jobs with Lisa, or Mick, or both. And when Mark isn’t around Julie drops Josh off here because he caused a power outage at daycare a couple months ago. And sometimes Sandra brings Connor over on weekends to let him practice archery in our backyard. It’s not like we’re banging all day without you now that your paternity leave is over.”

Leonard binds her wrists together and ties her hands to the metal bars of the headboard. “Ray,” he pulls the blankets aside to uncover Lilith’s bare legs, “are you in, or are you out?”

“I’m in.” Ray gets back into bed with them and leans in to kiss Leonard meticulously. Lilith makes a soft noise that sounds like _hng_ before Ray breaks the kiss and looks down at her with raw heat in his gaze. “I love watching you work,” he says, “taking her apart like you do with your guns, except Lil is capable of putting herself back together. I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he strokes his fingertips down the length of Lilith’s arm so lightly her stomach clenches at the contact. “I want to be in the middle after you make her come.”

“So you want me to fuck you while you fuck her,” Leonard deduces.

“Yeah,” Ray says in a hoarse voice. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I can do that,” Leonard smiles at him before he rolls onto his side to get closer to Lilith. Then he twists one hand into her hair and kisses her hard enough to make her moan while he licks into her mouth. Ray isn’t touching either of them, but she doesn’t need to be precognitive to feel his gaze on her like something palpable. Leonard squeezes her left breast with his other hand and flicks two fingertips over her nipple, slowly at first and faster as the nub hardens. Lilith squirms under him when he bites her lower lip and gently tugs it between his teeth before he kisses her chin, the line of her jaw, the sensitive place behind her ear. Leonard untangles the hand in her hair to stroke his calloused fingers over the nape of her neck, the hollow between her shoulder blades, the flesh covering her ribcage. Then he pulls back to look at her face as he cups her other breast and swirls his thumb over her nipple. “Lilith,” he rolls both of her nipples between his fingers and tugs on them hard enough to make her hips buck, “look at me.”

Lilith forces herself to open her eyes and blinks through how lightheaded she feels with her heart beating so fast, the pale freckled skin of her breasts flushed and hypersensitive. “Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi there.” Leonard holds her gaze as he slips one hand into her panties and groans softly at how wet she is. Then he teases her hole with his fingertip and smirks when her hips jerk against his hand. Ray splays one hand over her belly to hold her down. Leonard works three fingers into her knuckle deep while his thumb swirls over her clit, teasingly slow at first to draw the friction out until she begs for more. Lilith tries and fails to swallow a shrill noise as her orgasm froths between her legs, tremors convulsing through her thighs while her toes curl tight against the sheets. Leonard watches her come apart for him and leans in to kiss her temple before he moves back to do what Ray asked earlier.

Ray is kneeling between her legs when her orgasm ebbs. Lilith forces herself to open her eyes again when she hears the telltale crinkle of a torn condom wrapper. It occurs to her that they both collapsed on top of her last time they used this position, and this time she’s tied up so she’d have to use her powers if she wants to get away. Then she lifts her uninjured leg and puts the arch of her foot on Ray’s shoulder while he rolls the condom on. “If you squish me,” she warns them, “I will end you.”

Leonard chuckles low in his throat, his breath warm against the back of Ray’s neck. Ray curls his fingers loosely around her calf above her ankle and gently bites the knob of bone there. “Lil,” his dark eyes light up the way they do when he gets an idea, “would it hurt your knee to do this with your other leg?”

Lilith only winces once as she puts her left foot on his right shoulder. Ray hooks his fingers over the waistband of her panties and pulls them off before he uses the pillows to prop her up hips and give himself a better angle for the position he has in mind. Then he wraps his other hand around his dick and strokes the head between her folds.

Leonard slips one slick finger into Ray’s ass. When he adds a second finger and uses them to spread him open, Ray grabs the headboard with one hand to brace himself. Leonard splays his other hand over Ray’s stomach to stroke the coarse hair there and feel his muscles tense while he gets incoherent around his fingers. Lilith makes a high noise she refuses to call a whine. Ray holds her by the hips and slips into her so slowly she moans out loud in frustration. Leonard clenches his jaw around a groan and fucks Ray deeper inside her, burying his guttural noises in the curve where his neck meets his shoulder.

Lilith closes her eyes and sees nothing but stars.

* * *

Lilith and Leonard somehow end up going on a group date with Mick, Sandra, Mark, Julie, Shawna, and her new girlfriend McKenna. Ray stays home with Ryan, Isaac, and Josh while Oliver teaches Connor archery in the backyard. Mick texts everyone involved to come armed to a secret location. Leonard gives Lilith his spare helmet and helps her into the sidecar attached to his motorcycle because he knows where the secret location is and supposedly the motorcycle is a better transportation option than a car to wherever they’re going this afternoon.

“So,” Lilith says as she puts on a pair of clear goggles that probably belong to Lisa, “you want me to ride in a deathtrap with you, but you freak out when I open stable wormholes. What’s up with that?”

Leonard shrugs. When he turns and caresses her face in one smooth motion, the finite space between their lips becomes a question she answers by grabbing the lapel of his leather jacket and kissing him thoroughly. Leonard curls his fingers against the nape of her neck and kisses back harder. Lilith breaks the kiss and exhales a soft _woo_ that gets swallowed up as he guns the engine.

Apparently the secret location is the house Mick built at the center of the seventy-five acres of farmland he inherited after the fire that orphaned him. Lilith makes a mental note to ask him about the grove of eucalyptus trees growing in one of those acres. Mick uses a clean alias to farm commercially, which is why sixty acres of his land are cropped with corn, wheat, hay, and milo. At least one acre of his land is perpetually scorched earth.

Mick’s house itself is three stories of unpainted wood, a wraparound porch with a swing hanging by the front door, and a chimney of weathered brick spouting plumes of cedar smoke. Sandra is curled up on the porch swing, but she unfolds herself when Leonard pulls up and parks the motorcycle. Lilith takes the helmet off and pulls the goggles over her head carefully to avoid undoing the braid Leonard did for her that morning.

“Lil!” Sandra shouts triumphantly as she makes her way down the porch steps, “I got in!”

“Oh my god,” Lilith flails in her attempt to get out of the sidecar, “the teaching program?”

“Yes!” Sandra is taller than Lilith and when she hugs her, she ends up with her arms over her shoulders. Lilith wraps her arms around Sandra’s waist and squeezes back. Sandra decided to get her teaching certificate after she divorced Milo, so she applied to teaching programs at Hudson and CCU because those were her only viable options. Luckily she got into both of them. 

Leonard removes his own helmet and gets off the motorcycle. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Sandra untangles herself from Lilith. “I’m not hugging you, though.”

Leonard tilts his head and smiles without showing his teeth as his gaze flicks to Mick standing on the porch. “Good.”

“Hey, buddy.” Mick is grinning so wide Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know something probably happened between him and Sandra before they got there. “Lil,” he leans against the porch rail with his knuckles bent loosely over the wood, “the fresh basil and ripe tomatoes you wanted are in the fridge.”

“Why is Mick earmarking produce for you?” Leonard matches his pace to her hobble as they make their way to the porch.

“Because,” Lilith flops onto the porch swing and puts her purse between her body and the arm of the swing before she hooks the handle of her cane over the back of it. “I asked him to give me some tomatoes and basil so I could make pesto and farfalle.”

“What the hell is farfalle?” Mick wants to know.

“It’s the technical term for bowtie noodles,” Lilith yawns through the word _technical_. Leonard sits on the porch swing next to her and curls the fingers of his left hand around the chain holding it up; the fingers of his other hand stroke down her forearm before he seamlessly interlaces them with hers. Not clinging to her or claiming her, just touching her because he wants to.

Lilith brings his hand to her lips and kisses his fingers before she gently scrapes her teeth over his knuckle. Leonard clenches his jaw when his dick twitches in the confines of his pants and narrows his eyes at her in warning. Mick is still hunched over the porch railing, almost like he’s trying to make himself look smaller, less hulking, less of a threat. It’s not working. Sandra is leaning next to him regardless, her palm nestled in the crook of her elbow with her fingertips lightly stroking his forearm as Mark pulls up and parks Julie’s car.

Shawna, like Lilith, has never been to Mick’s house before. Which is how her girlfriend ends up driving them to the secret location. McKenna Hall is none other than Don’s cousin, the detective who ended up using a wheelchair after a close encounter with the Huntress in Starling City five years ago. Then she moved to live with her sister in Coast City and went through physical therapy, which eventually got her back on her feet and back on the job. McKenna transferred to Keystone City for a fresh start, got partnered with Julie on cold cases because she needs a cane to walk sometimes, and met Shawna through her. If it’s odd for her to hang out with the mother of her ex-boyfriend’s son, she doesn’t show it. When she meets Lilith, she deliberately looks at her face even though her cane is the first thing she sees.

“What happened to you?” McKenna asks.

“Torn ACL with a side of ruptured Achilles tendon.” Lilith bends and unbends her left knee to feel the familiar twinge of pain in her condyloid joint, “you?”

“Temporary paralysis,” McKenna fizzles out on the sibilant before she clarifies: “I got shot.”

Lilith offers her a fistbump and they blow it up after McKenna presses their knuckles together.

“What was that for?” McKenna wants to know, “crippled solidarity?”

McKenna once told Oliver that when you believe in what you do, you find a way to make it work. “No,” Lilith shakes her head so her braid flops over her shoulder, “that was for making it work. Is she the one?” she tilts her head to look at Shawna watching them in her periphery while she talks to Mark, “someone you never have to apologize to?”

To her credit, McKenna doesn’t freak out; Shawna must’ve warned her about the precognition. Instead she tucks her hair behind her ear with the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. “Please tell me you didn’t see what happened between me and Oliver after I said that.”

“I am friends with a startling number of people who’ve bumped uglies with Oliver Queen,” Lilith deadpans. “I don’t judge.”

“What is up with the eucalyptus trees?” Julie wants to know. “Did you plant them because they spontaneously combust and start brushfires in the outback?”

“No,” Mick shakes his head, “the oils in eucalyptus leaves are highly flammable,” he makes the words _highly flammable_ sound like innuendo turned up to eleven, “but they don’t spontaneously combust without a spark, like a firebug.” Which could mean an insect native to Australia causing brushfires willy-nilly, or an arsonist who may or may not be sexually attracted to fire itself.

Mick eventually leads them to what looks like a makeshift shooting range with enough empty beer bottles lined up to waste all of their bullets on. Apparently the premise of this group date is teaching Sandra to shoot a gun, which is a thing she told Lilith she wanted to learn. Hence the specific order to come armed. Luckily everybody else knows how to shoot because this motley crew consists of three career criminals, two cops, a former petty criminal, and a precog whose ex-girlfriend taught her to shoot after she told her about that one time she got kidnapped and ransomed by the dude who drove her here on his motorcycle. If her powers have taught her one thing, it’s that the future affects the past just as much as the past effects the future.

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know Mick offered to teach Sandra how to use a gun because it gives him an opportunity to stand very close behind her and put his hands on her under the pretense of adjusting her stance. When he does, the unresolved sexual tension between them hangs in the air like a solid thing, like the evaporated oils in eucalyptus leaves waiting for a spark to ignite.

Sandra misses the target for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with her aim.

Lilith extracts her revolver from the holster on her thigh, hidden under her skirt and strapped below the lace top of her stocking. “Len,” she keeps her voice steady despite the familiar heat creeping up her throat at the gravity of his gaze on her, “come here and cover my eyes, please.”

Mark makes a rude noise meant to emulate the cracking of a whip. Leonard scoffs before he does as she asks, leaning into her without putting his weight on her because he knows that could mess up her stance. “Why, exactly?” he whispers in her ear as he gently covers her eyes with one hand, his thumb stroking her brow through her bangs while his palm curves over the slant of her nose.

“Wait for it,” she whispers back conspiratorially as he smooths his other hand along her waist. Leonard curls his fingers into the crease where her thigh meets her hip through the fabric of her skirt. Lilith uses the perspicacity that comes with her powers to hit every target with her eyes covered and closed.

Mark stops making rude noises. Julie gapes, her mouth comically wide.

“Wow,” McKenna says softly. As if until that moment she doubted Lilith had superpowers.

“Showoff,” drawls Shawna.

“Nice,” Mick reluctantly takes his hands off Sandra and goes to set up more empties from the recycling bin he must’ve hauled out here.

“I want you,” Leonard says in a voice low enough that his words coil straight down between her legs.

Lilith shifts her weight off her bad knee to avoid clenching her thighs and holsters her revolver. “Inappropriate,” she retorts softly.

Sandra notices Mick watching them and looks up at him when he makes his way back to her. “Are you sure you want me?” she inclines her head to indicate Leonard whispering something in Lilith’s ear that makes her blush harder and bury her face in her hands. “Or is that what you really want?”

“Are you jealous?” Mick smirks, delighted. “I don’t want Snart. Or Lil. I wouldn’t say no,” he waggles his eyebrows and Sandra laughs in spite of herself, “but Lil doesn’t trust me. I don’t fuck people who don’t trust me,” he says firmly, “because what I need doesn’t work unless you trust your partner. I didn’t think people like me and Snart could have what he has with her and Palmer, but nothing changed for Snart except now he goes home to two people who love him after we pull a job instead of squatting. Or sleeping in warehouses. Or crashing at cheap motels. Or renting shitty apartments under false names. I’ve always wanted more than that. It’s why I built this place,” he sweeps one arm in the general direction of the house. “I don’t just burn things down.”

Sandra hunches into herself as she folds her arms because this is not slow. Suddenly this feels very serious and she doesn’t know how to handle that.

Mick doesn’t push her. Instead he shows his hand while he waits for her to gather her thoughts. “I like that you’re not afraid of me,” he says. “And the way you light up when you talk about your son. And that you made me put vegetables in my hamburger patties because I know it means you care. And how being married to that asshole didn’t break you. I don’t want to watch you burn,” he stuffs his hands in his pockets to avoid reaching for her, “you already went through something that showed you who you really are. I just want—”

Sandra goes on tiptoe and fists her hands in the fabric of his shirt to pull him down for a brutal kiss, greedily licking up his unspoken _you_ when she slides her tongue into his mouth. Mick wraps his arms tight around her waist and lifts Sandra so her breasts drag against his chest through their clothes. Lilith starts a slow clap. Sandra flips her off with one hand and cups the column of Mick’s neck with the other so her thumb scrapes the stubble on his jaw while her fingers clutch at his nape. At the same time, her foot actually pops in midair. Shawna grins and McKenna whistles like a wolf as they join the slow clap.

“Get a room!” Mark suggests with a snicker.

Julie smacks him upside the head. “It’s his house,” she deadpans, “all of the rooms are belong to him.”

Lilith eventually makes a tactical retreat back to the porch swing and falls asleep there curled up with her forehead nestled in the crook of her elbow. Leonard squats in front of the porch swing while Mick fires up the grill to cook the hamburger patties he made earlier; the ones Sandra told him to put vegetables in, specifically yellow onions and bell peppers of every color he grew. Lilith flails awake when Leonard brushes her bangs aside with careful fingers and kisses her temple, but his other hand on the back of her neck stops a head-butt from happening.

It occurs to her—and not for the first time—that Leonard has nice hands: strength edged with arrogance that bleeds through in his touch, long fingers he knows how to use, big enough to fit over her breasts without them oozing everywhere, rough with callouses from various methods of criminality. Ray has different callouses he got from working in mechatronics, his palms are softer, his long fingers are skinnier, his touch is gentle with a side of meticulous, and he bites his fingernails to the quick.

“Hi,” she murmurs, her throat dry from sleeping with her mouth open, which she knows is super attractive.

“Hi there.” Leonard smooths his hand from the nape of her neck to the hollow between her shoulder blades through the fabric of her top. “Time for dinner. If you’re hungry.”

“I’m always hungry,” Lilith yawns through the word _always_ and covers her mouth with the palm of one hand while she uses the other to prop herself up, “you know this.”

Leonard smirks, but doesn’t make an innuendo out of her words for once. “Mick actually made fries,” he informs her as she unhooks her cane from the back of the porch swing.

“Like, from potatoes he grew?” Lilith wants to know. Leonard hums in confirmation and rises in one smooth motion, towering over her even as she uses her cane to get back on her feet. Lilith makes a soft noise that he’s pretty sure he’s only heard during sex until now. Leonard smiles at her, a knowing twist of his mouth. “What?” she says, “I love fries.”

Leonard curls his fingers into her braid at the back of her neck and tilts her head up so he can steal a kiss. It’s quick and light, no tongue or teasing, his mouth on hers an end in itself.

“What was that for?” Lilith wants to know.

Leonard shrugs. “I just wanted to.”

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_. “I think Ray is feeling left out,” she tells him, “because we’re together all day while he works and now we’re on a date without him.”

Leonard untangles his hand from her braid and takes the hand that isn’t holding her cane while she hobbles into the house. “What do you want to do about it?” he asks.

“I want to take him on a date,” Lilith grumbles while he pulls a chair out for her, “but I don’t know how to plan one.” With that, she hooks her cane over the back of the chair and smooths her skirt underneath her thighs as she folds herself into the seat.

Mick puts the platter of fries in front of her. “What are you talking about?”

Lilith huffs and uses the tongs to scoop the fries onto her plate. “I don’t have much dating experience.”

Mark chokes on his beer. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he sputters.

“What?” Lilith retorts through a mouthful of fries. It comes out like, _whirr?_

“Lil,” Julie says, “you’ve been dating two people at once for over a year. I think you probably have oodles of dating experience by now.”

Lilith chews and swallows her fries before she attempts to articulate. “How about no,” she pauses to take a sip from her soda. “I’ve dated approximately three people total, including the ones I’m in a relationship with now. What we do isn’t really dating because we never go out,” she clarifies, “but Don and I never really went on dates either.” What she doesn’t say is that for a long time she didn’t want to go out in her chair, partly because the media was on her like flies on rotten fruit at first and partly because people looked at her like she was broken. As if she was something to be pitied. Or gawked at. Or to frighten children, like a cautionary tale. Aloud, she says: “lots of restaurants won’t seat you if you’re using a wheelchair.”

“I know, right?” McKenna puts her burger down to gesticulate. “It’s such bullshit.”

Lilith nods, a slow descent of her set jaw. “Don’t even get me started on streets,” she takes another sip of her soda, “some curbs are so tall you can’t get your chair over them and there’s no accessibility in certain parts of the city because the buildings were constructed in the eighteenth century.”

“Yeah,” McKenna nods, a quick bob of her head that makes her hair fluff over her shoulders. “Also, when you’re using a wheelchair part-time able-bodied people get really weird. Like, they assume you must be paralyzed. Or otherwise incapable of walking.”

“And then,” Lilith pauses for effect, “there are the people who hit on you because they assume you can’t fight back. Or run away.”

McKenna nods again, slower this time, as if to say _I know that feel_. “And they act like you should be grateful for the attention.”

“Yup,” Lilith eats another fry. “When people used to proposition me and Don, some assholes thought informing me that being crippled wouldn’t matter if I was on my back was a good pickup line. It wasn’t,” she shrugs with one shoulder, “but at least they didn’t go with asking me to prove I’m a natural redhead. Or, _if you’re Lilith does that mean you like to be on top?_ ”

Shawna bursts out laughing. “Wait, what?” she wheezes.

“Okay,” Lilith holds up her hands and her fingers gnarl like claws, “the mythological Lilith is mentioned approximately once in Isaiah 34:14, where _lilit_ is a vaguely owlish demon laying eggs and hanging out with other creatures of the night. Also, in the fragments of Isaiah they found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the word is _liliyyot_ , which is plural, so the text is probably referencing the _lilitu_ class of demons from Mesopotamian mythology or the Babylonian goddess of the night. Lilith is cast as Adam’s first wife in the _Alphabet of Ben Sirach_ to explain the discontinuity between Genesis 1:27, in which man and woman are created at the same time, and Genesis 2:7, in which man is created from dust and clay like Pandora was in Greek mythology, and God doesn’t create the first woman until Genesis 2:23, which is when the whole thing with the rib happens. Adam refuses to lie beneath Lilith so she nopes out of Eden and becomes a demoness,” she pauses to breathe, “but the _Alphabet_ is pseudepigraphic, which means it was taken as a primary source even though it was a satirical medieval text written between the eighth and eleventh centuries, so the perception of the mythological Lilith in popular culture is based on that depiction of her, not anything that was actually in the bible or its apocryphal texts.”

When she stops ranting, everyone at the table is listening to her while they eat instead of talking amongst themselves. At least they look like they’re interested in what she has to say instead of mentally telling her to shut up.

Shawna finishes chewing a bite of her cheeseburger before she says, “I’m surprised the dudes propositioning you and your ex-girlfriend were smart enough to know any of that.”

Lilith yawns into the hollow of her palm. “I know, right?”

“So you’re saying your namesake left paradise because Adam was bad in bed,” Julie deduces. “That’s _awesome_.”

“Snart,” Mark says, “people are eating here. Quit looking at her like you want to take her clothes off with your teeth.”

After dinner, Julie and McKenna pull Lilith aside to ask her if she’ll consult with the KCPD on cold cases. When she agrees, Julie informs her that she brought a box of cold case files for her to look at. Then she changes the subject to ask, “What’s it like to be with two dudes at once?”

Lilith shrugs. “I’m not always with them both at the same time,” she says, “and sometimes they’re with each other without me. What do you want to know, specifically?”

Julie glances at Mark, who is in the kitchen with Leonard because Mick pressganged them into doing the dishes while he scrapes and cleans the grill. “Whatever you’re comfortable telling me,” her voice goes quiet as she clarifies, “I don’t really know where to start.”

Lilith is awkward, but not shy. When it comes to sex, her philosophy is: _if you can’t say it out loud, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it_. “Ray and Len are very different people,” she begins. “Which means they don’t have sex the same way. Ray is demisexual, so for him sex is a way to express how he feels about us. He doesn’t like pain at all; pulling his hair or a hint of teeth is fine, but no nails or harder stuff. He’s straightforward, meticulous, and very thorough. He prefers doing it face to face, but that’s not always possible with two other people instead of one. He likes being told what to do, but we’ve all gotten pretty good at anticipating what the others need by now. Len is a control freak. He doesn’t ask permission or forgiveness. He just takes what he wants. Which isn’t my jam,” she yawns through the word _jam_ , “so I started using a technique with him called explicit verbal negotiation and consent. Which means he tells me what he wants to do with me and I say yes or no. He’s super intense. He likes teasing me, drawing things out, making me say please, or his name. He bites me hard enough to leave bruises sometimes, but not without making it very good for me. He really likes eating me out. He’s gone down on me for hours before—”

“Wait,” Julie blurts. “What?”

“Yup,” Lilith pops the _p_ sound at the end, the awkwardness in her tone clashing with the smile on her face. “What, does Mark not go down on you?”

Julie shakes her head. “It’s not like he didn’t try,” she says, “but he doesn’t like feedback and he got angry when I didn’t come after he made the effort. So—”

“So he stopped making the effort,” Lilith deduces.

Julie sighs. “Pretty much.”

“Okay,” Lilith elongates the vowel sound awkwardly, “he expects you to go down on him, right?”

Julie ducks her head reluctantly before she says, “Yeah.”

“Unacceptable.” Lilith is too irked to attempt her Lemongrab voice, “do you want me to rectify the situation?”

Julie folds her arms, suspicion furrowing her brow and weaving tension into the line of her shoulders. “How?”

“First,” Lilith holds up one hand palm out as if to say _wait for it_ , “I’ll turn him into a flea, a harmless little flea. Then I’ll put that flea in a box. Then I’ll put that box inside another box. Then I’ll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives,” she somehow manages to cackle sarcastically, “I’ll smash it with a hammer!”

Julie claps both palms over her mouth to muffle her helpless shriek of laughter. Then it occurs to her that Lilith might know people who could pull a Yzma and turn Mark into a flea. “Wait,” she wheezes, “for real?”

“No,” Lilith shakes her head so the end of her braid slithers between her shoulder blades. “I’ll ask him to put the cold case files you and McKenna brought for me in the sidecar. Then I’ll use my words. I’m pretty good at words.”

By the end of the night Leonard’s sidecar is full of cold case files, ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and Lilith’s cane. Which is how she ends up riding home behind him on his motorcycle, clinging to him for dear life and screaming internally. When he pulls up and parks in their driveway, her arms and legs are wrapped tight around his torso, fists clenched in the fabric of his shirt, ankles hooked together like the gnarled aboveground roots of an old tree.

Lilith unclenches after the engine dies, the astringency of her lungs audibly slicing at the summer night while she breathes in gulps of humid air. Then she hobbles into the house with the bag of produce over the arm that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane. Leonard picks up the box of cold case files and holds it under one arm so he can open the door for her.

“Julie called,” Ray informs them after Leonard closes the door behind her, “Josh is sleeping over.”

“Okay.” Lilith didn’t need to be precognitive to see that coming. “Ray,” she sits on the couch and unties the laces of her Doc Martens so she can take her shoes off, “we missed you tonight.”

“Yes,” Leonard puts the box on the coffee table and shucks his jacket off before he hangs it on his designated hook beside the front door, “very much.”

Ray grins at both of them, his eyebrows arched like a challenge. “Prove it.”

Lilith raises her eyebrows at him in return, a nonverbal _challenge accepted_.

This is another thing neither she nor Leonard can fix with sex.

That doesn’t mean they can’t try.

* * *

**August 2017**

* * *

Lilith’s birthday is August seventh, which falls on a Monday almost four years after the particle accelerator explosion. If someone had told her in 2013 that by 2017 she’d be officially engaged to a trillionaire, unofficially married to a world class thief, mom of not one but two kids, and capable of making the space-time continuum her bitch, she would’ve laughed hard enough to further incapacitate herself. _Started from the bottom now we’re here_ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

When she wakes up that morning, Leonard is sucking a bruise into the soft flesh over her hipbone. When she turns and looks at Ray, his mouth is swollen and his clavicle is marked in the same way. “Good morning,” he smiles crookedly, takes her hand, kisses her fingers.

“Rude,” Lilith huffs, “you started without me.”

“Well,” Leonard tilts his head to grin at her from between her thighs and deadpans, “you snooze, you lose.”

Lilith uses the hand Ray isn’t holding to scrape her nails through the short hair at the back of his neck. Leonard escalates by licking her in light strokes along the length of her slit, flicking his tongue over her clit on the upstroke. Then he spreads her open to lick and suck at the folds of her cunt while he works two fingers inside her. Lilith squirms while her face flushes with raw heat, her hips pitching forward in desperate lurches.

“Len,” says Ray. Leonard pulls back to look at him with pupils blown wide, his face slick with the evidence of her arousal. Ray swallows thickly before he informs him, “we have to be on set at the WKEY-TV station in an hour.”

“Don’t need an hour.” Leonard crooks his fingers and smirks when she tries and fails to swallow a shrill noise. “Give me a minute.” With that, he flicks his tongue over her clit again before he presses his mouth to her and _sucks_. Lilith covers her mouth when she comes so hard it leaves her boneless and gasping into the hollow of her palm as if he stole the very air from her lungs.

Ray leans down to pull Leonard into a thorough kiss. It turns filthy quick. Lilith attempts to untangle herself from them while they’re focused on each other, but Ray is still holding her hand and Leonard is half on top of her so she fails epically. Then she sighs and moves through space-time into the shower because she doesn’t need to be precognitive to know it would’ve taken forever to persuade them to let her go. Leonard breaks the kiss and looks down at the space Lilith no longer occupies. Then he looks at Ray before he shrugs and gets out of bed to join her in the shower.

After she talked to her biological mother a couple months ago, Ray convinced her to do the interview Vicki requested. Which is how they end up on _The Scene_ , a talk show hosted by four ladies: Linda Park, a sports reporter for C. C. P. N. and contributor to the _Central City Citizen_ who briefly dated Barry a few years ago. Lia Briggs, a former scream queen who is Lilith’s mother in an alternate timeline. Also, a vampire. Tawny Young, an anchorwoman from L. A., and Vicki Vale herself, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the _Gotham Gazette_. When she mentioned it to Caitlin, she told Lilith that her mother Bethany Snow—an anchorwoman for Channel 52 in Starling City—was a guest host on _The Scene_ once. Caitlin, like Lilith, doesn’t talk about her family much. Barry was comatose the last time she spoke to her mother in person. Which only happened because she and Cisco were in Starling City to inventory an insolvent S. T. A. R. Labs facility that was eventually reopened after Ray bought the company.

Lilith ends up in the passenger seat while Ray drives. Isaac and Ryan are strapped into their car seats behind them. Leonard opted to drive his motorcycle instead of sitting between a teething baby and a telepathic infant. Ryan has grown in one of his lower central incisors, the tiny white baby tooth eye-catchingly visible whenever he opens his itsy-bitsy mouth. “How exactly did you get me to agree to this malarkey?” she wants to know.

“Well,” Ray grins without taking his eyes off the road, “I’m very charming when I want to be. _Forbes_ did call me charismatic in the profile they did on me after I bought S. T. A. R. Labs, you know.”

“‘Dr. Palmer is a lethal combination of charisma and intelligence, with a visionary mind capable of shaping the future of technology as we know it.’” Lilith rolls her eyes. “There’s so much irony here I don’t know where to start.”

Ray laughs, the sound palpable enough to make warmth bloom in her belly. “Also,” he keeps one hand on the steering wheel as he reaches over the gearshift to intertwine their fingers, “you love me.”

“Hell yeah,” Lilith sighs as her anxiety spools in her gut like spaghetti twisted around the tines of a fork. “I’m going on a nationally syndicated TV show hosted by my biological mother for you. If you wanted to know what true love looks like, dude: this is it.”

Ray knows what true love looks like. It’s watching Lilith go through a panic attack without putting his hands on her because her mental health is more important than his instinctual need to protect her. It’s knowing Leonard doesn’t like certain aspects of rough sex because he was abused by his father so hitting people he loves isn’t his jam. It’s Lilith telling him that he made her want the future even though she was terrified of the future at the time. It’s Leonard teaching him to fight and refusing to go easy on him because the bad guys who actually want him dead won’t do him any favors. It’s Lilith sharing her visions with him even though it hurts her to see things in hypertime. It’s Leonard getting flustered at the idea that someone could want to be kind to him without expecting something in return. It’s Lilith freaking out after that one time Josh mildly electrocuted Ryan and realizing he’s just as much her kid as Isaac is. It’s Leonard getting so overwhelmed he actually cried a little the first time Isaac telepathically called him _dad_. It’s Lilith claiming him as hers despite how much she hates the concept of a relationship being analogous to ownership. It’s Leonard stealing from the other guests at his work functions so masterfully they don’t realize they’re missing their valuables before he returns what he took, except that one time he stole a pair of canary diamond cufflinks worth four million dollars from Loren Jupiter—the central ten carat diamonds from those cufflinks are Lilith’s favorite earrings now. It’s knowing Lilith wore those earrings today because she doesn’t need to be precognitive to deduce that Loren Jupiter will be watching _The Scene_ in his office. It’s watching Leonard change his plan or his game because now he has more to lose than he did before.

Of course he knows what true love looks like. It’s something he sees every day, after all.

* * *

It is a truth universally—but not multiversally—acknowledged that Lilith doesn’t celebrate her birthday. Which has more to do with her mother forbidding her to have things like cake and ice cream as a kid because she was a ballerina and less to do with an anathema to celebrating her continued existence.

Iris didn’t know when Lilith’s birthday was during the first year of their friendship, the year she turned twenty-three. Lilith spent her twenty-fourth birthday alone in her apartment with Leonard, who attempted to give her an orgasm for every year of her life, but he stopped at the halfway point because she was so oversensitive and sore after the twelfth time she came. Ray flew her and Leonard to England for her twenty-fifth birthday, and they all spent a week there visiting museums and art galleries with collections of Rossetti paintings before Leonard stole _Lilith_ by John Collier from the Southport Atkinson Art Gallery.

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know there’s a party waiting for her in the cortex at S. T. A. R. Labs suggested by Iris, planned by Cisco, and funded by Ray. _I’m low-key dreading an event thrown in my honor with presents and cake and people who love me. I’m a terrible person_ , she thinks.

 _Nope_ , Isaac thinks with inflection eerily reminiscent of Ray.

Lilith sighs and looks down at her son in her arms to give him what she hopes is a reproachful expression only seasoned mothers can pull off. _What did I tell you about eavesdropping?_

 _That it’s rude_ , Isaac gurgles while he retorts, _but sometimes necessary_.

Lilith knows that for weeks all her son could hear and feel were her thoughts and her emotions. Which means he’s more hers than Ray’s or Leonard’s because his consciousness was literally formed out of hers in the womb, the modern day telepathic equivalent of Athena emerging full grown and in full armor from Zeus’s split skull. It’s not a development she would ever wish on anyone—she doesn’t even like being inside her own head sometimes—but they’re freakishly linked and she has a hunch that’ll be useful someday.

Leonard helps her renegotiate Isaac into his baby carrier before the elevator doors slide open. Felicity, Cisco, Caitlin, and Ronnie must’ve spent hours filling rubber balloons with helium because the ceiling of the cortex is festooned.

Lilith tilts her head back to look up at them. It occurs to her that she spent most of her life without people who weren’t her parents. When she was a teenager there was Tamara, and Derek. When she was in college there was Don, Patty, and Fiona, with Kathy and Felicia in their periphery. Now there’s Iris, Eddie, Sandra, Barry, Felicity, Caitlin, Ronnie, Cisco, Lisa, Leonard, and Ray, with so many others in their periphery the threads connecting them are varied enough to create a metaphorical tapestry. “Wow,” she says.

“I know right?” Cisco grins and bobs his head enthusiastically as he looks up at the balloons, “they’re glow in the dark.”

“It’s lunchtime,” Lilith deadpans.

Felicity catches her eyes and gives her an incredulous look that says, _do you really think we don’t have the technology go full dark in here?_

Lilith cocks her head in concession before she flops into her papasan chair. Barry must’ve sped it up here for the party—his powers give him a negligible amount of superstrength, which is how he managed to carry Leonard miles into the woods to negotiate with him after he robbed the Santini casino many moons ago. Iris is talking to Caitlin and Felicity while Ronnie opens a pizza box with Stein, Clarissa, and Henry. Barry, Joe, and Eddie are telling Julie and McKenna about the Department of Metahuman Aggression they’ve been pushing Captain Singh to sanction. Mark is keeping an eye on them while he talks to Mick because Julie and Eddie dated for a few months during their academy days while his other eye is on Josh, who is cornered off in a playpen because he started crawling a few weeks ago. Isaac and Ryan end up flopping around on blankets in the playpen with Josh because they’re not old enough to crawl yet.

Sandra is sitting with Patty, Fiona, and Kathy, who is in her seventh month. Cisco borrowed Lilith’s motorized wheelchair for Lisa during her seventh month and kept it around for her eighth and ninth months because she refused to stay in bed for weeks on end without multiple orgasms as incentives; she’s due in three days but that’s not stopping her from attending this party. Shawna is perched on a table next to Lisa, her boots under the table and her sock feet swinging like pendulums over the floor of the cortex. Crystal is fangirling over Shawna and informing her proudly that Caitlin was the one who codenamed her Peekaboo. Luna is watching her fondly—she got to keep her internship after she pointed a gun at Leonard because he deserved worse for murdering her father, and having a technopath on their side couldn’t hurt to boot. Cisco suggested Captain Computron for her codename. Ray postulated it should be Colonel instead. Lilith asked if they were high totally deadpan and said her codename should be Analog because she used radio frequencies to dampen their powers.

In that vein, Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know her mom isn’t here because she’s elsewhere yelling at ‘Aunt’ Vicki right now.

After everybody in the room wishes her a happy birthday without crowding her because they all know her well enough to anticipate her residual anxiety in the aftermath of _The Scene_ , Iris scoots to sit next to her and offers her an egg salad sandwich. “I saw the interview,” she says pointedly. “It was on in the breakroom at C. C. P. N. because Linda was hosting.”

Lilith has no idea how to respond to that, so she takes the egg salad sandwich and eats the first half carefully to avoid the possibility of drippage staining her dress.

As if on cue, time stops. Bonnie steps into the cortex like she owns the place, dark hair swept back to keep it out of her face, dark eyes sharp as her gaze flicks over the room.

“Hey,” Lilith tries and fails to sound nonchalant as she breaks the silence reigning eerily between them. “What’s happening?”

“It’s time for us to give you context for the knowledge you’ve gleaned about the multiverse,” Bonnie offers her hand to Lilith with intent, “will you come?”

Lilith takes Bonnie’s hand and holds her sandwich in the other while she lets the visions come: the multiverse being remade, the unstable tachyons bleeding through between parallel universes, the causality loop connecting Rip Hunter with past and future versions of Booster Gold, and a familiar repurposed police station. “It’s the satellite,” she drops Bonnie’s hand, “the one abandoned outside space-time after the Monitors went extinct.”

“Yes,” Bonnie nods. “It’s also where you will build your archive.”

“Wait,” Lilith raises her hands palm out as if to say _hold up_. “What?”

Bonnie fixes herself a plate with a sandwich, kettle chips, a pickle, and cookies strategically placed to avoid the pickle juice. “Lil,” she catches herself because this version of Lilith isn’t someone she knows well. Or at all. “Lilith, will you come?”

It occurs to her that there is nothing she wants for her birthday more than this. Leonard is going to freak out, but she doesn’t need his permission. Ray is going to bombard her with questions about the mysteries of the multiverse because he totally understands questing for knowledge. Lilith gnaws on the inside of her cheek before she asks: “can I bring my sandwich?”

Bonnie laughs, the noise incongruously fond. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Lilith scoops a handful of chips onto her own paper plate and tucks a can of soda into the crook of her elbow before she raises her eyebrows and says: “beam me up, Bonnie.”

Lilith eats the other half of her sandwich while Bonnie introduces her to the other Time Masters: Rip Hunter, inventor of the Time Sphere. Daniel Carter, his present day ancestor, codename: Supernova. Michelle Carter, his aunt, codename: Goldstar. Michael Jon Carter, his father, codename: Booster Gold. Rip uses the console to project a holographic map of the multiverse, all fifty-two of its parallel earths.

“Earth-1 is the primary earth,” Rip explains, “where the convergence of alternate timelines that caused the interdimensional crisis which in turn remade the multiverse took place. Earth-14 is your earth,” he points to one glowing sphere, “the only earth capable of breeding new worlds because your subconscious ability to manipulate hypertime prevents my father from erasing microverses and pruning divergent timelines from your reality.”

 _Why didn’t he just erase me from the timeline?_ Lilith wonders. _Unless_... “I’m your ancestor,” she deduces.

Rip nods. “I go by Rip Hunter to protect myself,” he says, “people have tried to erase me from the timeline by killing Daniel and his wife, but my real name is Raymond Jon Carter. Ripley Veronica Palmer was my mother’s name before she married my father,” he gives her a smile that reminds her so much of Ray it hurts a little, “she’s your great-great-great-granddaughter. At present she’s with our version of you on another mission.”

“Wait,” Lilith stretches the vowel sound out in confusion, “your version of me?”

Rip opens his mouth to explain how he got the funding to build his Time Lab, which in turn gave him the facilities to invent the Time Sphere.

“Spoilers,” says Michelle.

Rip closes his mouth.

“Rose is my wife,” Daniel interjects, “you saved her from her fate in the twenty-second century and brought her back in time. If not for you, we never would’ve met.”

“Wait,” Lilith bites down on the _t_ at the end as she processes that information, “the Rose that Eobard Thawne was obsessed with?”

Daniel nods.

“If you keep preventing me from dialing back the multiverse within a multiverse you created,” Michael cuts in, “the Bleed that separates parallel dimensions will erode your reality and remake your world.”

 _Welp_ , thinks Lilith.

When she returns to S. T. A. R. Labs after creating a causality loop by convincing Rose to escape her speedster supervillain stalker and travel back in time, she does so a few seconds after the past version of herself has gone so nobody can tell she left at all.

“Are you okay?” Iris wants to know.

Lilith grins and tucks an askew strand of hair behind her left ear. “I’m awesome.”

Elsewhere, the Reverse-Flash blames his nemesis for the tachyon particles found at the scene of Rose’s disappearance and runs back in time to kill Barry for taking her from him.


	9. Blessed Be the Boys Time Can’t Capture

**It has come to seem**  
**there is no perfect ending.**  
**Indeed, there are infinite endings.**  
**Or perhaps, once one begins,**  
**there are only endings.**

Louise Glück, “Faithful and Virtuous Night”

* * *

_Drop a Heart and Break a Name_  
**Epilogue**  
Blessed Be the Boys Time Can’t Capture

* * *

**2021**

* * *

Lucille Anna Palmer is born howling at the stroke of midnight on the penultimate day of October. Lucy’s mother insists that her middle name is after Anna Pavlova, not another woman buried in Starling City with _Beloved_ written on her tombstone.

Lucy’s fathers know better.

* * *

**2033**

* * *

Patrice is a tour guide at Central City Museum for years before its owner founds the Flash Museum and offers her a better salary to work there instead. Pat retires twenty years after the particle accelerator explodes and leaves on her third honeymoon before they can hire a replacement. None of the other tour guides are available on short notice that day. Which is how an archivist at the museum ends up filling in for her in the meantime.

“Dexter Myles founded the Flash Museum after the interdimensional crisis was averted in 2019,” the archivist explains to the tour group, “approximately five years after the first and second Flashes appeared in Central City and Keystone City.”

Walter West—an alternate version of Iris’s nephew—emerges from hypertime itself in the aftermath of the crisis and becomes the third Flash. Irey, his daughter with Linda Park, is named after his version of Iris. In anticipation of his twenty-fifth birthday, the original version of Wally fights with Barry for months about whether or not he’s ready to become the fourth Flash. Cisco ends the argument by making Wally a new suit as a gift. Bart Allen, Barry and Iris’s grandson from an alternate timeline, ends up living with Jay Garrick—the first Flash, technically—and his wife Joan as their ward.

“Eobard Thawne was known as Professor Zoom in his own century and the Reverse-Flash in ours,” the archivist leads the tour group into a long hallway that functions as the rogues’ gallery, “his connection to the Speed Force was as unstable as his mind, which swung over the line between genius and madness like a pendulum killing time inside a grandfather clock.”

Rose Levin becomes an investigative reporter for the _Central City Citizen_ and marries Daniel Jon Carter after she escapes the fate Eobard Thawne condemned her to for spurning him in the twenty-second century. Raziel Carter, their nonbinary AMAB kid, is a sophomore at CCU now; xe is the second Supernova, a legacy that stretches through centuries from Daniel to his great-great-grandson Jonar.

“Leonard Snart was Captain Cold, leader of the Rogues and nemesis to three Flashes. Snart became Citizen Cold in 2021 after he stopped challenging the Flash to epic fights he inevitably lost,” the archivist pokes a Funko Pop of Captain Cold so its head bobbles. “Snart and his sister Lisa—”

“Golden Glider!” a girl whispers gleefully to her friends.

“—along with Mick Rory, their partner in crime—”

“Heatwave,” an elderly tourist grumbles under his breath.

“—started a company they called Golden Snowball Recoveries,” the archivist flails one hand to indicate a screen on the wall playing an infomercial in which various supervillains and superheroes tell people to call 1-800-GET-COLD: _lost or stolen items recovered or your money back!_ “Amunet Black, a career criminal who ran a black market called the Network between Central City and Keystone City before the S. T. A. R. Labs particle accelerator explosion gave her mechanokinetic abilities, took Snart’s place as the leader of the Rogues in 2023. Blacksmith earned her codename after she melted down her ex-husband Keith Kenyon, a former Rogue otherwise known as Goldface, and sold his liquefied corpse on the black market. If you want to know which part of him is in that bottle…” the archivist gestures to a bottle of golden elixir in a glass case. “Well, let’s just say it’s not his face.”

Citizen Cold orders Heatwave to melt Blacksmith down after she orchestrates a jailbreak from Iron Heights because Jarrod Jupiter escapes and threatens to gas an elementary school. Of the hundreds of students there, seventeen have parents who happen to be superheroes or supervillains: Yasu Takamoto, Lian Harper, Josh Jackham, Ryan Choi, Frances Kane, Raz Carter, Elaine Raymond, Joanne Rory, Irey West, the Smoak-Allen twins, the Thawne twins, the Ramon twins, and the Palmer siblings. Jarrod’s body is found when the C. C. P. D. helicopter lands on the roof of the school, frozen to death with his gas cylinders missing. Citizen Cold and Golden Glider have led the Rogues since then, separately and simultaneously.

After the group finishes touring the rogues’ gallery, the archivist leads them into the multiverse exhibit. “Our multiverse contains fifty-two parallel earths,” says the archivist. “Ours is Earth-14, which contains a multiverse within a pre-established multiverse with more divergent timelines and microverses than any other known earth.”

Project Slipshift culminates in the invention of a supersuit that renders the wearer capable of manipulating space-time and hypertime itself. A. R. G. U. S. blames the research subject—a chronokinetic metahuman referred to in their classified records only as “Omen”—when the suit vanishes from the S. T. A. R. Labs facility in Central City. What they don’t know is that one of her descendants from the twenty-second century stole the suit and created a causality loop by giving it to a former college football star.

“While the Flash came into his powers, other masked vigilantes emerged in other cities: the Atom in Starling City before he relocated to Central City. Green Arrow and the Birds of Prey in Starling City. Batman and his ilk in Gotham City. Superman in Metropolis. Wonder Woman in Boston. Aquaman in Amnesty Bay. Martian Manhunter in Middleton. Star Sapphire in Coast City. Green Lanterns in Coast City, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit.” At that, the archivist stops in front of an official poster of the JLA and continues: “the Justice League of America was founded during the crisis in 2019 to unite superhero teams across the country in their effort to save the multiverse.”

Wayne Enterprises funds the JLA headquarters, a floating space station that orbits the moon named Watchtower after the network and codename Felicity uses to run mission control for Team Flash and Team Arrow. Lilith starts running mission control for the Atom as Omen from the cortex at S. T. A. R. Labs. Barbara Gordon joins the Birds of Prey after the Joker shoots her and runs mission control from the Clocktower in Starling City as Oracle. Inez Rhodes—Iris’s niece—becomes the second Watchtower after her best friend Felicia Kane inherits the mantle of Flamebird from her cousin, while Bette takes the name Hawkfire. Imako Takamoto—Inez’s girlfriend and Kimiyo Hoshi’s daughter—manifests photokinetic abilities and becomes a masked vigilante called Vega. Yasu, Imako’s younger brother, eventually inherits the energy blaster and the name Doctor Light from their mother.

When the last tour ends and the archivist hobbles back to her tiny office, a tall man in a black suit follows her and leans against the doorway with his hands in his pockets of his duster.

“Hi,” the archivist says after she puts her nametag in the top drawer of her desk and fetches her purse from the spare chair by the swivel chair behind it. The walls are festooned with Degas prints and selfies she took with various superheroes and supervillains. The one in which Wonder Woman kissed her on the cheek is in a place of honor next to her museology degree, above a print of _Dancers at the Barre_. The one where she tugged on Superman’s cape is next to a print of _Fin d’arabesque_. The one in which she is surrounded by four Flashes, two Kid Flashes, and two Impulses is under a print of _Yellow Dancers (In the Wings)_.

“Hi there.” Leonard smiles at her like she is more precious than every gem he ever stole. “Happy birthday.”

“I’m forty-two,” Lilith deadpans. “According to Douglas Adams, this is the year I shall become the Amazing Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

Leonard knows the _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ reference is wasted on him, so instead of responding verbally he takes his hands out of his pockets and cups her face while he kisses her. “I liked it when you called me Snart,” he strokes his thumb over her cheekbone after he pulls back to grin at her, “you haven’t called me that since our first date.”

“Technically I called you Leonard on our first date,” Lilith retorts, “because I refused to call you Snart during sex. Then you told me to call you Len.”

“I remember,” Leonard says in a low voice. “I remember everything about that night, actually.”

“I’m not having sex with you on my desk again,” Lilith boops his nose, “I don’t care how persuasive you are.”

Leonard shrugs and kisses her again, softly. “Well,” he breaks the kiss to smirk at her, “you have another desk at home. I can wait.”

* * *

**2015**

* * *

_Gilmore Girls_ rewatch night is on Mondays. Lilith sits in the corner of her giant couch with her bad knee braced and propped up on a pair of cushions. Leonard occupies the space beside her with his hand on her uninjured knee while he strokes her bare kneecap with his thumb. When she attempts to get up and grab herself a drink, he offers his assistance because he knows that day is a particularly bad knee day. Then he asks Lisa if she wants anything before he asks everybody else the same question. Ray decides to help bring out drinks for everyone because one dude is incapable of carrying beverages for over a dozen people. Leonard shows Ray where everything is: coffee, tea, juice, milk, hard and soft drinks.

“So,” Ray makes a futile attempt to force nonchalance, “you seem to know your way around here.”

“Yes,” Leonard shrugs, “I do.” At that, he opens the fridge to procure a can of soda for Lilith and a beer for himself. “I’ve spent almost every day with Lilith these past few months. I know where things are. I know how it feels to fall asleep beside her and wake up with her in my arms. I know the soft noises she makes when she comes. I know how sweet her cunt tastes. I know what she looks like naked with her hair loose and her breasts in my hands while she rides me.” Leonard smirks as Ray clenches his fist above the hollow of his throat in a futile attempt to loosen a tie he isn’t wearing. “I know you’re going to think about what I told you just now when you’re alone tonight.”

Ray does, but he steadfastly refuses to do something about the erection that ensues besides a cold shower. When he sees Lilith at S. T. A. R. Labs the next day, he blurts: “you deserve better.”

“Wait,” Lilith yawns. “What?”

“Snart,” Ray sits in a conveniently located swivel chair and scoots toward her, “you deserve better than him.”

“Really,” Lilith says flatly. “Len hangs out with me pretty much every day even though I don’t always have the spoons for sex. He helps me carry groceries and cook and clean the kitchen in the aftermath. He listens to me talk during whatever show or movie we’re watching. He read my thesis on how perceptions of the mythological Lilith in popular culture have contributed to the sexism inherent in female archetypes. He goes down on me for hours. What more do you think I deserve, exactly?”

“I think you deserve someone who loves you,” Ray says vehemently, “and I don’t think he’s capable of that.”

“I don’t want someone who loves me!” Lilith raises her voice. Ray’s stubborn expression falters, the set of his jaw unmade when his mouth gapes open. It’s the first time he’s ever heard her shout. “I don’t want to think about the future! I know Len is eventually going to get bored with me and go back to his life of crime, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to have someone in my life who makes me feel good about myself in the meantime.”

Ray is quiet for a long moment while he listens to her breathe. “I’m sorry,” he puts his hand on her uninjured knee. “I didn’t mean you don’t deserve someone who makes you happy. Of course you deserve that,” he holds her gaze and clarifies, “I think you deserve everything.”

Lilith sighs, but she doesn’t tell him to take his hand off her. Ray considers how easy it would be to smooth his hand under her skirt, past the lace top of her stocking where his intentions would become clear. Then he would hold her gaze while he fucked her with his fingers and tell Lilith just how much he wants to hear the soft noises Leonard said she would make for him. It’s Leonard’s smooth voice he hears when he thinks about licking the evidence of her arousal off his fingers after she comes, the smug way he said _how sweet her cunt tastes_.

“Len isn’t the only person in my life who makes me happy,” Lilith covers the back of his hand with her palm and squeezes gently, “you do too.”

Ray crosses his legs, suddenly ashamed of himself for being half-hard in his pants—her friendship is infinitely more important to him than his romantic feelings for her. It’s not a consolation prize.

Leonard crawls into bed with her later that night because he’s taken to sleeping over even when he doesn’t spend the day with her. Lilith shuts her laptop down and puts it on her bedside table.

“What did you say to Ray?” she wants to know.

Leonard presses in close behind her with his whole body, his breath on the shell of her ear hot enough to make her shiver in his arms. “Why?”

“Because he told me I deserve better than you this afternoon.” Lilith yawns through the word _afternoon_ , covering her mouth with one palm while he plays with the fingers of her other hand. “What did you say to him?”

“Ray wants you,” Leonard informs her without answering her question.

Lilith crumples into helpless cackles that shudder through her in bursts while she covers her mouth with her cupped palms. “How about no,” she wheezes once she feels capable of words, “you’re wrong. Like, assuming the earth is flat levels of wrong. Have you seen him?” her voice pitches incredulously higher on the word _seen_. “Have you seen _me_? Ray has a type,” she clarifies, “there is a picture on his desk of a conventionally attractive blonde girl. Her name was Anna. She was his fiancée. He loved her so much he promised himself he wouldn’t be with anyone else after she died. Then he met Felicity. Another conventionally attractive blonde girl. She’s not a natural blonde, but that is neither here nor there. He loved her. She didn’t love him back. Ray has a type,” she says this like it’s something she’s told herself before, “and it’s not me.”

Nowhere in there did she say she didn’t have feelings for Ray. Leonard doesn’t want to think about the implications of that. Instead he scrapes his teeth over the sensitive place behind her ear and smooths his hands under her shirt to play with her breasts. “I see you,” he tugs on her nipples with his thumbs and forefingers just hard enough to draw a soft noise from her throat, “and I like what I see. I like you,” he caresses her teasingly slow through the fabric of her panties and grins when she makes another soft noise for him, “let me show you how much.”

“I—” Lilith makes a high noise in her throat when he strokes the coarse damp curls between her legs. “I like you too,” she says. “I like how your eyes can be grey, or blue, or both. I like how they get darker when you look at me,” he swirls his fingertip into her hole and suddenly, intensely, she _aches_ for more of him inside her. “I like having you here in my life, in my bed.” With that, she covers her mouth with her palms because she has neighbors in three directions who don’t need to hear this.

Leonard is overwhelmed by the realization that his baby sister was right. He loves Lilith. He’s in love with her. He hasn’t thought about the job in months. He doesn’t like the loss of control, the weakness inherent in falling for her. Leonard slips two fingers into her to use that slick when he rubs sloppy circles over her clit. “Say my name,” he orders, his voice raw.

“ _Len_.” Lilith makes a futile attempt to stifle another moan as her hips buck almost violently against his hand. “Len—”

“Now beg me to fuck you,” Leonard orders as he reaches for the box of condoms on her bedside table. “I want to feel you come while I’m inside you, but first I want to hear you beg for it.”

“Len,” her voice is needy and breathless and it makes him rethink drawing this out, “fuck me, _please_. I need more than your fingers. I want your thick cock inside me, stirring me up—”

At that, she hears the telltale crinkling noise when he tears the condom wrapper with his teeth. Then he pulls her panties down her thighs and spreads her legs wider, his other hand in the crook behind her uninjured knee to hold her where he wants her. Leonard smooths his hand down her thigh before he lets go, trusting her to keep her knee up so he can have the angle he wants, and uses his hand around the base of his dick to guide the head of him inside her. Lilith snaps her hips back and does something revolutionary with them, like a pirouette with all of the motion narrowed down to just her hips instead of her whole body. Leonard keeps playing with her clit while he fucks her and turns her head with his other hand so he can kiss her thoroughly. Their height difference makes the angle less awkward: he towers over her when they’re vertical, so when they’re horizontal with their hips moving together, the top of her head ends up somewhere under his chin. Lilith moans into his mouth when he fucks her harder and moves his fingers over her clit in faster, rougher circles. Leonard gets what he wants when she comes and clenches around him, but he keeps fingering her until she comes again so her orgasms blur together while she makes soft noises in her throat. It’s enough to make him come so hard he sees white, his own pleasure so intense that he forgets how to breathe for a moment.

Lilith throws the used condom away while he breathes through it and flops back against her pillow, her camisole sticky with the sweat that pooled between her breasts and at the small of her back.

“I’m not satisfied,” Leonard growls, “not even close.” With that, he moves to kneel between her legs and tugs her panties all the way off before he puts her thighs on his shoulders.

“Okay.” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ as he licks into her without kissing his way along her inner thighs first because he wants to taste her so badly. Then she scrapes the fingernails of one hand through the hair at the nape of his neck and covers her mouth with her other hand to muffle the high noise he tears from her throat when he hums against her.

Leonard eats her out until he’s hard again from making her come with his tongue and his fingers. Lilith is trembling under him when he pushes her camisole up to palm her breast and suck her nipple into his mouth, his tongue moving in slow flicks over the hard nub while he cups her other breast and tugs her other nipple between his fingers. Eventually he stops using his mouth on her breasts once they’re flushed and hypersensitive. “Lilith,” he cups her face with one palm and twists his fingers into her hair, “look at me.”

Lilith gnaws on the inside of her cheek before she speaks. “I’m fine,” she says softly, “don’t stop. I’ll kick you in the face again if you do.”

Leonard smirks because he doesn’t need to be precognitive to know she couldn’t kick him right now if she tried. Not that she would. Lilith knows his father used to hit him and his sister. Which is why the closest she’s gotten to using violence against him since the hostage situation is pulling his hood down over his head to shut him up. “I doubt it,” he says. What he means is, _I love you_.

Three days later he’s gone.

* * *

**2020**

* * *

Lilith goes shopping for wedding bands with Ray and Leonard after they finally set a date for the ceremony. Derek—the first dude she ever had sex with—is there buying an anniversary gift for his wife Tamara, her understudy from _Swan Lake_ who was waiting in the wings to step in after she sustained her injuries.

 _I’ve had sex with both people in this marriage_ , she thinks. _Why didn’t you warn me, universe?_

“Lilith!” Tamara exclaims, covering her shock with something sweeter, “how are you? I haven’t seen you in years, not since—”

Lilith notices how Tamara is looking everywhere but at her cane. “I tore my ACL and gave you your big break in the aftermath,” she deadpans.

It’s Derek who notices the ring on her finger and asks, “are you engaged?”

“Yup,” Lilith flails one hand at another glass case where Ray is looking at cufflinks and Leonard is surreptitiously casing the security system in the jewelry store out of habit.

“Wait,” Tamara says, “which one is your fiancée?”

Apparently they didn’t see the announcement in the _Central City Citizen_. “Technically him,” Lilith points to Ray, “but we all live together and we have two kids.” Which is one reason making the wedding happen is taking so long: kids are time-consuming.

Derek chokes on his own spit. “What.”

“Technically one of our kids is his godson,” Lilith elaborates, “but if I’ve learned anything as Vicki Vale’s ‘niece,’” she crooks her fingers like quotation marks around the word _niece_ , “it’s that a genetic contribution doesn’t make you a parent.”

Ray crosses the room and puts one hand at the small of her back. Leonard stops casing the store to follow suit and take her hand, the one that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane, while they exchange a look containing a nonverbal so palpable she feels it pass between them above her head.

As if on cue, the salesman brings out the selection they asked for. “Excuse us.” Ray gives them his best smile.

Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ and unclenches her shoulders. Leonard bends to whisper in her ear, “who’s that?”

“Tamara, my understudy in _Swan Lake_ ,” she whispers back, “and Derek, who is her husband now, apparently.”

“Derek,” Leonard says flatly.

“Yup.” Ray smooths one hand along her spine through the fabric of her dress until his thumb circles deliberately over the sensitive place behind her ear. Lilith gnaws on the inside of her cheek to muffle the high noise he provokes from her throat. “Rude,” she huffs.

Leonard puts his other hand on the space between her neck and shoulder, his fingers curling over her clavicle while the rough pad of his thumb strokes the nape of her neck. “Derek who you fucked in the dressing room at your mom’s studio,” he deduces.

“Yup,” Lilith stretches out the vowel sound awkwardly. “I also fucked Tamara in the dressing room at the theatre during rehearsal for _Swan Lake_ , but you don’t need to be jealous because it happened eleven years ago. I didn’t know you,” she brings their intertwined hands to her lips and kisses his knuckles, “and I know you’ve fucked way more people than me. Which is such a double standard, but I digress. I’m just not the jealous type.”

“Really.” Leonard gives her a knowing grin she feels without seeing it for herself. “What about Rose?”

“Rose who works at Sherwood Florist with Sara and Cindy?” Lilith shrugs with one shoulder, the one he isn’t touching so he won’t think she’s trying to shake him off. “I like her. She hit on all three of us after you told her you were spoken for now. She’s got moxie. I like that in a lady.”

Ray leans in to press his lips against her temple before he kisses Leonard on the mouth, sweetly. “Cool it,” he teases after he breaks the kiss with a crooked grin.

Leonard exhales a melodramatic sigh. Lilith answers the question about ring size for them both while they’re preoccupied with each other. Then she sees a man who is literally made out of cursed playing cards attacking the K. C. P. D. precinct where Julie, McKenna, and Renee work.

“Oh my god,” she makes a garbled noise in her throat, “are you fucking kidding me?”

* * *

**2036**

* * *

Isaac is a pretty antisocial kid because his powers give him insight he doesn’t want. The way he sees it, thoughts are supposed to be private—a person’s metaphysical headspace is like a sanctuary, except when a person can’t escape from whatever is wrong with their brain. What telepathy does is take invasion of privacy to a whole new level.

Sometimes it’s not his fault. Some people think louder than others, so with those people it’s like trying not to hear a bomb exploding or thunder rolling through the darkening sky. Sometimes all he can do is ride out the storm.

Isaac’s mom is consistently the loudest thinker he knows, but he has a hunch that has more to do with her thoughts being the first he ever heard than anything else. Isaac’s dads are constant thinkers—one is always thinking forward, the other is always thinking ahead—and there’s a stark contrast between how they think that Isaac knows all too well.

Some people spend more time in their metaphysical headspace. Frances— _Frankie_ , he reminds himself, _she wants people she likes to call her Frankie now_ —is one of those people. Frankie has been one of his best friends since before he can remember. She was born when he was six months old. She hung out with him, Ryan, Archie, Leslie, Elaine, Josh, Lian, and Raz when they were all in school together. She was the only person in their circle who didn’t have a masked vigilante parent until her mother remarried Renee Montoya, a detective who transferred to the C. C. P. D. from Gotham City by day and the second Question by night.

Isaac loves Frankie, that’s not the problem. It’s that his love for Frankie doesn’t feel romantic. It occurs to Isaac that he’s never personally experienced romantic love with anyone, ever, now that he’s thinking things through.

Which doesn’t mean he has no idea what romantic love feels like. Literally every single adult couple he knows is still in love with each other even though they’ve all been together for years. Statistically, at least some of them should be divorced or unhappily married and staying together for their kids by now. None of them are. Especially his parents, who hold hands and make out in front of his friends and have sex all over the house.

Isaac wants to have sex with Frankie, is the thing—he loves her, and he wants to have sex with her, but he’s not in love with her. Actually, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t love people romantically at all, he’s just not sure how he feels about that. Frankie is in love with him. Which he knows because she told him so, not because he read her mind. _I’m in love with you_ , she said it to him like it was the simplest thing in the world, _I thought you should know_.

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know her son is freaking out because he doesn’t notice her crawling into the bouncy castle with him until she boops him on the nose. “What’s wrong?” she wants to know.

“I love Frankie,” Isaac informs the vinyl floor, “she loves me too.”

Lilith cackles and covers her mouth with her palm. Isaac blanks so hard it must be forced. “No,” she huffs, “I’m not laughing at you. It just occurred to me that you probably inherited your reaction to romantic love from your dad.”

“Yeah,” Isaac steadfastly keeps his eyes on the cone at the top of one turret, “about that.”

“Aromantic,” Lilith says gently.

“What,” Isaac retorts.

“Aromantic is the word you’re looking for,” his mom informs him, “nothing is wrong with you, you’re not broken, your feelings for Frankie are valid even though you’re not in love with her, and you can still date her as long as you’re honest with her about wanting a queerplatonic partner instead of a garden variety girlfriend. If you want to. No pressure, though.”

Apparently there’s a word for how he works. Who knew? Not him. “Hey, mom?” Isaac says. “I need time to think.”

“Okay.” Lilith scoots over to thread her arm through the crook of his elbow and gives him an unobtrusive hug before she renegotiates herself upright. Then she climbs the vinyl ladder, slips to where her cane is waiting for her at the bottom of the slide, and hobbles back to the house.

Isaac flops so he’s lying on the vinyl floor and closes his eyes. Frankie is there in the metaphysical space inside her head, but he doesn’t read her mind or teleport to occupy the same physical space she does. Instead he teleports back to his dorm and does so much research over the next few days that Josh doses his coffee with melatonin on the third morning to make him sleep.

Frankie isn’t remotely surprised when he comes out to her later that week. “I know,” she clicks her tongue stud against her teeth when she enunciates, “doesn’t mean you don’t love me back.”

“It’s not the same way you feel about me,” Isaac says carefully.

“I know,” Frankie is using her powers to stick paperclips over her fingernails and give herself blunt metal claws. “I knew it a long time ago,” she clarifies, “the only reason you never figured it out yourself is because you miss things when you spend too much time in your own head trying to avoid overhearing thoughts. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’m up for a queerplatonic partnership. If you are.”

Isaac doesn’t wait until his mind catches up to his mouth. “Hell yeah.”

Frankie doesn’t need telepathy to know he wants to kiss her. “Do you want me to take my tongue piercing out before we do this?” she wants to know.

“Don’t you dare,” Isaac says vehemently as he closes the distance between their bodies, “you have no idea how often I’ve thought about kissing you with the tongue piercing involved.”

“Well,” Frankie deadpans as she pushes herself up on her tiptoes because he inherited his height from his father and he’s nineteen so he’s still growing, “I can’t read your mind.”

“Good,” Isaac manages to retort just before she slants their mouths together, the demagnetized paperclips clattering to the floor.

* * *

**2041**

* * *

Josh Jackham inherited his powers from his father and pretty much everything else from his mother: his dark eyes, black hair, and brown skin, his height—or lack thereof—and an occasionally disturbing sense of humor. Another thing he inherited from his father is a preference for tiny women capable of kicking his ass into next week. Which is a legitimate possibility if the woman in this scenario is Lucy Palmer.

Except his best friend happens to be a telepath and Lucy happens to be his best friend’s baby sister. At least he didn’t realize he was into her when she was still in high school. Isaac would’ve killed him with his brain if their dad—the one with a documented history of shooting people who piss him off and a superweapon that could give Josh actual blue balls—didn’t get to him first. So it’s better that he had the _oh no she’s hot_ epiphany now that she’s a junior in college and he’s in his third year of med school.

Which does nothing to calm the brewing storm when Isaac corners him to ask, “What exactly are your intentions with my sister?”

“Wow,” Josh can feel the clouds forming outside in response to the hammering of his heartbeat, “you sounded just like your dad when you said that. Impressive.”

Isaac arches his eyebrows. All of a sudden he looks eerily like his other dad, if Ray had freckles and bright red hair. Isaac, unlike Josh, is very tall. Actually, he’s six foot four. Which means he’s taller than either of his dads. Josh has no idea where the hell that extra height came from because his mom is five foot nothing.

“I don’t need your permission,” Josh blurts, “or your dads’, for that matter. It’s sexist to ask fathers or brothers for permission to date a girl. I need her permission,” he clarifies, “nobody else’s.”

Isaac tilts his head in concession. “That’s true,” he says.

What he doesn’t tell Josh is that Lucy is chronokinetic, like their mother. Which means Lucy is also immortal, like their mother. Isaac is probably immortal too because he shared a blood supply with their mother in the womb, and Caitlin’s hypothesis is that fluid exchange with Lilith facilitates immortality. What they don’t know is whether repeated exposure keeps their fathers young or not. Which is why his baby sister has never dated anyone: because kissing the wrong person is not an option for Lucy.

“Good luck,” Isaac says before he teleports out.

Josh looks through the condensation on the windowpane at the darkening sky and wonders what the hell just happened.

* * *

**2144**

* * *

Mike Carter, former college football star, meets Ripley Palmer after he blows out his knee. Ripley is the daughter of Burton Palmer, the best prosthetist in the world. Wil Palmer—her grandmother—invented and patented 3D printing technology capable of making new bones for people who fuck up their joints beyond repair.

What he doesn’t know is this: Ripley started having visions of him as Booster Gold years before they finally meet.

It’s Ripley who gets her grandmother to donate his 3D printed condyloid joint pro bono. It’s Ripley he seeks out after his knee replacement. He assumes she’s a fan. He’s never been more wrong.

“Michael,” huffs Ripley, “you have a destiny that’s greater than professional football. I’m precognitive, y’know. I’ve had visions of you ever since I can remember,” he gives her a smug look and she makes a garbled noise in her throat, “but maybe I’ve got the wrong guy.”

“I can be the right guy.” Mike gives her what he knows is his most charming smile.

Ripley snorts, then raises her eyebrows at him like a challenge. When he tells their son this story, he will say that he fell in love with her eyebrows first. “Prove it,” she says.

* * *

**2025**

* * *

Isaac and Ryan are third graders when Jarrod Jupiter escapes from Iron Heights. Lucy is in kindergarten when her estranged uncle threatens to release hallucinogenic gas in their elementary school. Lilith knows how badly that could go wrong because there is a parallel universe were Jarrod kidnaps her and she makes the hallucinations caused by the drug he invented into reality. Isaac has the same powers as that late version of his mother. Lucy is too young and undisciplined to do more with her abilities than have visions so she can’t stop time and contain the situation until help arrives.

Jarrod is on the roof of the school with gas cylinders. If his threats aren’t a bluff, the dosage will be lethal to their kids. Once she finds her half-brother, Lilith waits for Leonard to put on his Citizen Cold outfit in the great room.

“Ray,” she informs the couch cushion, “you don’t have to see this. I’m only going because Shawna has a double shift at the hospital and Len can’t get there fast enough by himself.”

“Lil,” Ray tilts her chin up and holds her gaze, “he threatened our children, our niece and nephew, our godchildren, and a whole school full of other kids who don’t deserve to die because he wants revenge on you for putting him in jail after a drug he invented killed ninety-seven people. I want him dead.”

“Okay.” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ and uses her cane to get back on her feet. Ray takes the hand that isn’t otherwise occupied with her cane. Leonard puts his hand on her left shoulder, grinning wide at the thought of getting back in the game. Lilith moves them all through space-time to the roof of the school and takes the gas cylinders out of play before she restarts time for everybody else.

“Hello, Jarrod.” Leonard aims his cold gun at the skinny redheaded man with the same hazel eyes and freckles as the woman he loves and pulls the trigger.

* * *

**2019**

* * *

Lilith can sense the antitachyons bleeding through into her world for months before the crisis happens: it manifests as a film in her mouth at first, like she hasn’t brushed her teeth, then as a headache buzzing at the back of her skull, like static. Trouble is, she doesn’t know how exactly she keeps the future version of Booster Gold from regulating the Earth-14 multiverse, so she can’t stop it from happening.

Ray goes out into the worst of it as the Atom while the Bleed is unmaking their universe. Leonard, the Rogues, and their families end up at the house. Lilith is in her reading room sorting through her visions when she figures out what to do about it.

“What are you doing?” Leonard wants to know.

“I need to change my clothes,” she informs him as she hobbles into their bedroom. “I can’t save the world in leggings and a camisole with no bra on underneath.”

Leonard follows her into their bedroom and closes the door. “You’re not going out there,” he says flatly.

“You can’t stop me,” she points out as she hooks her favorite bra—one of the many that Ray bought for her, pale green and edged with creamy white lace—in the front and shuffles it around to the back. Then she pulls her leggings down, kicks them aside with her uninjured foot, and puts on the matching panties.

Leonard pins her between his body and the dresser, his hands on either side of her. “I’ll tie you to the bed,” he says in a deceptively calm voice, “I’ve done it before.”

“How about no,” Lilith retorts, “not without my explicit consent, you haven’t.” With that, she moves through space-time into their closet and picks out the dress she wore to her dad’s funeral.

Leonard remembers her telling him that she needed a black dress to wear at the funeral, and when he pointed out that she owns several black dresses, she snarked back that she likes the dresses she owns and if she wore one of them to her dad’s funeral she would never want to wear it again. Which is why this dress has been in the back of her portion of their walk-in closet since her father died. “You promised never to leave me,” he swallows thickly.

“I’m not leaving you,” Lilith huffs. “I’m physically going to leave the house, but I’m coming back after I save the world and whatnot.”

Leonard leans against the closet doorway and folds his arms. “How, exactly?” he wants to know.

Lilith sighs and unclenches her shoulders. “I’m going to move through space-time into the Bleed so I can neutralize the antitachyonic particles and stop the crisis. I can’t fight the monsters or supervillains coming through from other universes, but I can do this.”

“Ray said the Bleed was saturating the air over the city,” Leonard says in his calmest voice, the one that means he’s trying not to lose his cool, “you can’t fly. What if you fall?”

Lilith shrugs with one shoulder. “Ray will catch me,” she says with such certainty that his heart clenches in his chest.

Leonard wraps one arm tight around her waist, twisting the fingers of his other hand into her hair to kiss her so hard she gasps into his mouth. Lilith lets him devour her just in case this kiss is their last. “I love you,” he whispers hoarsely. “Don’t die.”

“I’ll do my damnedest,” Lilith deadpans. Then she nuzzles his nose with hers before she moves through space-time into the Bleed. _I didn’t know it would hurt this much_ , she thinks as she stabilizes the antitachyonic particles. Apparently messing with the fifth dimension on an atomic level feels like serrated knives sawing through your cerebral cortex. Who knew? Not her.  _Why didn’t you warn me, universe?_

Lilith averts the crisis and blacks out in the aftermath. Ironically, when she falls out of the sky, she hits the Jupiter Incorporated skyscraper on her way down. Ray leaves a crater in the rooftop when he lands and falls to his knees next to her broken body, only to have the melodrama of the moment undercut after he notices how fast her injuries are healing. Then he resets her broken bones so they don’t heal wrong. Lilith wakes up long enough to let a bloodcurdling scream shake loose and cough up blood before she blacks out again from the pain. Ray compromises his secret identity when he flies her to the nearest hospital in his exosuit and tells the nurse the unconscious woman in his arms is his fiancée.

It’s Isaac who teleports to the hospital with Leonard, not Shawna. “I couldn’t feel mom,” he explains. “I teleported downstairs to ask dad why. Then he told me to take him to her when I could feel her again.”

“You’re the hero,” Leonard snarls. “You were supposed to catch her.”

Ray exhales a heavy sigh and holds up his hands palm out in surrender. “Contrary to Clarke’s third law,” he explains in a tone struck through with exhaustion, “my tech isn’t actually magic. Lil’s uplink doesn’t work in hypertime or the fifth dimension or wherever the hell she goes when she does her chronokinetic thing. I had no idea where she was until it was too late.”

“How is she alive?” Leonard growls. It’s a legitimate question because she fell more than a thousand feet before she hit the skyscraper.

Ray lets their son crawl up his legs into his lap and folds himself around him in a hug that’s more for his own benefit than Isaac’s. “Technically chronokinesis and vitakinesis are both psychokinetic abilities. It makes sense for traumatic injuries like these to trigger the manifestation of that power in her.”

Leonard exhales a heavy sigh of his own as he sits in a chair to their left. Ray makes a soft noise when he strokes his hair, a nonverbal reassurance he’s not actually angry at him.

“Where’s Ryan?” Ray asks softly.

 _At home_ , Isaac thinks. _Josh is there too, so he’s not alone_.

Lilith ends up having multiple surgeries to fix the hemorrhaging and the subdural hematoma, but the blunt force trauma she sustained after the fall are gone by the time she ends up on the table. Leonard and Ray get into a heated argument when the former suggests that Isaac should manipulate the memories of the medical professionals involved so they won’t remember how fast she healed or how injured she really was. Ray steadfastly refuses and Lilith can’t be the tiebreaker because she’s anesthetized at the time.

That’s when the trinity walks into the waiting room. Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman in their capes and armor with Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, Wonder Girl, and Superboy carrying snacks and coffee along with their assorted weapons and gadgetry. Ray is still wearing his exosuit minus the helmet in the chair to his right.

Bruce sits in the chair across from him. “I was going to offer to pay her medical expenses,” he says without disguising his voice, “it seemed like the least I could do for the woman who saved us all.”

“Lil hates people who throw money around.” Ray lets Isaac leave his lap to go questing for snacks. Cass gives him a bag of gummy bears. Dick gives her a thumbs up to showcase his approval. Tim rolls his eyes at them. “I’d bet pretty much anything that she’ll insist on paying for what our insurance won’t cover herself when she wakes up.”

“Which one of you is Len?” Clark asks.

“Why?” Leonard wants to know.

Clark gives him a searching look and ostensibly finds whatever he wanted to see before he answers. “Because she said _I’m sorry, Len_ just before she hit the building. I was close enough to hear her voice,” he taps the space above his ear to indicate his superhearing, “but too far away to break her fall.”

Leonard clenches his jaw and stands in one smooth motion. “Excuse me,” he says through clenched teeth and stalks off. Ray accepts a cup of coffee from Tim and drinks from it instead of watching him go.

Mick arrives just in time to see Leonard punch the hospital wall, the skin over his knuckles splitting and the bones in his hand protesting with a loud _crack_ that might turn the stomach of a person who doesn’t enjoy punching things. As it stands, Mick is not that person, so he says: “Aw, buddy.”

“She didn’t _know_ ,” Leonard snarls. “She used what she thought was her last breath to apologize to me because she thought she was going to die.”

“She didn’t, though.” Mick deduces.

“No,” Leonard swallows thickly. “She survived. That’s what Lilith does.”

Lilith wakes up in the recovery wing, disoriented and stuck at one point in time because Caitlin dosed her with the vaccine after the anesthesiologist realized the knockout gas wasn’t affecting her at all. On the bright side, she didn’t have to be awake for her surgeries. On the darker side, her shiny new vitakinetic abilities stopped working and so everything hurts.

 _I’m awake_ , she thinks, _but at what price?_

Isaac notices her return to consciousness first. Dick is lying on the floor of the waiting room with his legs in the air, balancing the telepathic two-year-old on a makeshift platform he made out of his feet. Isaac is holding his hands while he bends and unbends his knees, his small fingers curled over the fingerstripes on his gloves.  _Hi mom_ , he thinks.

 _Hi_ , Lilith thinks back. _How pissed is your dad?_

 _Well_ , Isaac sends her what feels like a mental shrug, which is odd, _he went outside and punched a wall after Superman told him that you apologized before impacting a skyscraper_.

 _Superman is here?_ Lilith swallows in a futile attempt to get some moisture back in her mouth. Then, as an afterthought: _is Wonder Woman here?_

 _Yes_ , Isaac sends her a panoramic image of the waiting room, _she is_.

Lilith buries her face in her hands. Which, of course, provokes a jolt of pain in her cerebrum that compels her to double over and close her mouth because the pain is so intense she almost throws up. _Wonder Woman can’t see me like this_. With that, she asks the nurse to get another hospital gown for her so nobody will see her naked backside. Apparently she bled all over the clothes she wore. _I regret nothing_ , she thinks mournfully when she realizes she ruined her favorite bra and panty set with bloodstains, _matching lingerie makes me feel like I have my shit together. If anyone ever needs to feel that way, it’s when one is saving the universe_.

Ray enters her room first, his exosuit off by now and a pair of hospital socks with grips underneath on his feet because his sabatons go over socks he invented specifically to wear inside the exosuit with sensors on the heel and the toes.

“ _Lil_.”

That’s all he says, just her name. That’s all it takes to make tears form at the corners of her eyes, clumping her eyelashes before they fall.

“Hey,” she rasps, “is there water? Or maybe a cup of ice chips? I feel like they replaced my larynx with steel wool during surgery.” Ray goes to get some water for her. Leonard leans against the doorway to her private room and looks at her. Lilith holds up the hand without the IV attached to shut him up when he opens his mouth. “I regret nothing,” she raises her eyebrows like a challenge, “you don’t get to be the only person in this relationship who’d rather die than lose what we have. Also, you don’t get to be the only one here who’ll do anything in your power to protect our family.”

Leonard waits for the anger to bubble up again with a heat so intense he broke his hand to make it stop, but instead a calmer warmth unfurls in his chest. “Don’t ever scare me like that again,” he orders in a raw voice.

“Isaac told me you punched a wall,” Lilith retorts without making a promise she can’t keep. “Let me see your broken hand, loser.”

Leonard closes the distance between them and sits on the hospital bed to her left, snaking one arm around her shoulders and pulling her against him to bury his face in the space between her neck and shoulder. Lilith fists one hand in the fabric of his shirt and puts her other arm loosely around his neck, his breath hot on the skin of her throat. Ray returns and sets the plastic cup of water on the windowsill before he puts an arm around each of them in turn, curling his fingers gently into her hair and pressing a soft kiss to her temple. Leonard starts crying so his tears fall on the front of her hospital gown while Ray strokes the curve of his shoulder.

“Hey,” Ray says softly to mitigate the low-key sobbing noises. “What sounds better, Justice Society of America or Justice League of America? Asking for a friend.”

Elsewhere, an alternate version of Wally West emerges from hypertime itself.

* * *

**2031**

* * *

Caitlin has known Lilith doesn’t age since she ran the blood tests for Project Slipshift and noticed her telomerase is hyperactive. Which means Lilith heals fast, sort of like Barry. Which does nothing for her striae, the hypertrophic scar on the back of her calf, or the other scars she’s collected over the years. Caitlin eventually notices that Ray isn’t aging and postulates that Leonard isn’t either, so she asks to run more tests on them. It turns out their telomerase is hyperactive as well. Which means, if Caitlin’s hypothesis is correct, that Lilith’s particular brand of immortality is sexually transmitted.

When she explains this to them, she substitutes the words “regular fluid exchange” because she doesn’t want to imply that Lilith is a carrier for a sexually transmitted infection.

“Wait,” Lilith raises one hand palm out as if to say _hold up_ , “you’re saying I’m the Fountain of Youth.”

“Well,” Leonard smirks at her, “she’s saying your cunt is.”

Lilith slumps in her chair and closes her eyes to sort through the visions. Ray starts asking questions at a speed he normally mitigates for people whose brains don’t go as fast as his does. Caitlin has to tell him to slow things down.

Ray takes the train to Starling City the next day instead of chartering his private jet or flying in the exosuit and he stays there for three weeks. Which is two weeks longer than he’s ever stayed before.

While he’s gone, Lilith gets increasingly freaked out; she gives herself space and locks herself in her reading room after she gets home from working at the museum. Ryan and Isaac are fourteen, Lucy is ten, and they have no idea what is wrong with their mother.

Leonard waits until their kids are sleeping before he picks the lock and lets himself into her reading room. Lilith is curled up in her papasan chair with her glasses on top of her head and her eyes red from tears he didn’t see fall because she wouldn’t let him in. Leonard kneels in front of her instead of sitting in the chair she bought for him years ago because it’s not close enough. “I’m actually really excited about this,” he says softly. “I can keep pulling jobs forever,” he puts his right hand on her left leg and strokes the scar tissue on the back of her calf with his fingertips, “and I can love you forever.”

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know that by _you_ he doesn’t just mean her. “I’m a terrible person,” she whispers. “Ray literally ran away because he’s totally freaked out by this but I’m still glad you’re both immortal too so I don’t have to spend eternity alone.”

Leonard puts his other hand on her face and kisses her soft and slow. “You won’t be alone,” he promises, and he always keeps his promises.

Leonard picks Ray up from the train station—he considers bringing the motorcycle and making Ray fold himself in the sidecar on their way home, but then he remembers that Ray has literal baggage from his trip. Which is how he ends up driving Ray back to the house in cold silence.

Ray lasts fifteen seconds before he starts talking. “Lil’s mad,” he says, “isn’t she?”

Leonard hums in confirmation, a low sound in his throat accompanied by a smirk. Ray swallows thickly because it affects him more intensely than it should right now.

“You’re enjoying this,” Ray says, his tone fluctuating with incredulity.

“I am.” Leonard shrugs and keeps his eyes on the road ahead. “You ran away from us. You’ve never done that before. I’m excited to see what she’ll do about it.”

What she does is talk everything through with Ray to make absolutely sure he wants to keep having “regular fluid exchanges” with her, complete with air quotes around the words. Then she hobbles to their bedside table and pulls something out of the bottom drawer.

Ray arches his eyebrows because the bottom drawer is where the toys live. “What are you going to do?” he wants to know.

Lilith holds up the cock ring to show him. “Here’s how this is going to work,” she says, “you’re going to undress and you’re going to lie at the foot of the bed with your feet on the floor, then I’m going to put this on you and Len is going to fuck you while I sit on your face. I want you to keep your hands above your head no matter what,” she orders while he takes his jacket off, “and tell me if your dick or balls start to hurt during because they’re not supposed to.”

“Is this what you do without me?” Ray asks before he unbuttons his shirt.

Leonard shrugs because the cock ring was her idea, but it was probably his fault—if he didn’t love teasing her, she would’ve never thought of an equalizer. “Not always,” he folds his arms as Ray bends down to untie his shoes and remove his socks. “Just like I don’t want to bite her as hard as I can every time we have sex.”

Ray pulls down his pants and his briefs in the same motion. Then he lays on the bed with his hands above his head and his feet on the floor like she said, his dick already hard from being told what to do.

Lilith waits for Leonard to take his shirt off before she stops him in the middle of undressing. “Len,” she says before he drops his pants, “I need you to go get a towel so we don’t stain the duvet cover.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Leonard points out.

“No,” Lilith shakes her head so her hair falls and resettles over her shoulders, “but this one has owls on it. I don’t want to stain the owls.”

“Why do you want to stain the owls?” Ray wonders. “What did the owls ever to do you?”

Leonard refuses to dignify that with a response. Instead he goes to get a towel from their bathroom while she puts the cock ring on for Ray and leans in to kiss him thoroughly before she undresses so he doesn’t feel too much like a toy.

“So you’re sure about this,” she says with a thread of insecurity in her voice, “choosing immortality.”

“I may not have a choice,” Ray gently reminds her, “but once I calmed down I realized what this means. I can be there when we cure cancer. I can be there when they figure out how to make bones from scratch with a 3D printer and give you a new knee. I can invent customized exosuits for other people and have my own atomic, heroic team. I can love you forever,” he looks over her shoulder at Leonard and lifts his hips so he can put the towel down, “both of you. I can’t think of anything else worth doing for all eternity.”

Lilith bites the inside of her cheek hard to keep herself from crying with relief. “Okay,” she exhales a soft _woo_ and moves his arms out of her way. “Lucy has a fencing match in an hour and a half. Roy agreed to drop her off but we’re supposed to meet them there and we’re driving Lian to her archery practice afterward,” she puts her glasses on their bedside table before she puts her knees on either side of his head. “Ryan is at S. T. A. R. Labs with Cisco and Archie, Isaac is at the Kane estate with Frankie and Josh, and they’ll probably teleport home eventually.”

“Good,” Leonard says as he slicks up his fingers and strokes Ray’s perineum with one fingertip. Then he teases his asshole and grins when the muscles in Ray’s stomach and thighs clench. “Spread your legs more for me,” he orders.

Ray does as he’s told while he fists his hands in the duvet cover to stop himself from putting them on her hips and pulling Lilith down so he can lick her because inhaling the heady smell of her arousal is nowhere near enough. Instead he kisses the striae on the inside of her thighs, mapping familiar territory with his tongue while Leonard works him open with his fingers.

“Lil,” he whispers, his warm breath ghosting over the damp curls between her legs, “please.”

Lilith sits on his face and he closes his eyes to sigh in ecstasy as he buries his face in her cunt. Ray groans under her when Leonard thrusts into him slowly because the thick slide of Leonard’s dick in his tight ass and Lilith’s toes curling against his shoulders every time he flicks his tongue over her clit would be enough to make Ray come right there.

Except he can’t, so he licks and sucks on her while he makes fervent sounds that shudder through Lilith hard enough that she ends up on her elbows with her own hands fisted in the duvet cover somewhere above his head. Ray is so hard it’s almost painful after he brings her twice with his tongue. Leonard comes inside him after her first orgasm because her soft noises push him over the edge and pulls out. Ray’s breath stutters in his throat when Leonard starts playing with his balls and takes as much of his sac into his mouth as he can without nosing at the base of Ray’s dick. Lilith crawls back carefully after her second orgasm and kisses the arch of his left eyebrow. Ray makes an indignant noise, caught somewhere between too much stimulation and nowhere near enough. Lilith moves her mouth to the column of his neck and he feels her smile against his skin before she sucks on the sensitive place over his pulse.

Ray moans out loud, first their names punctuated by a hoarse _oh_ and then onto more unintelligible noises. Lilith kisses her way down his torso, mapping the hard planes of muscle under his skin with her lips and tongue. Leonard has moved on from sucking his balls to licking his perineum, one finger slowly circling his asshole without sliding inside.

Lilith peels open a condom packet. Ray actually bites his tongue and swallows a desperate noise in case she wants to straddle him while Leonard fucks her from behind. Which is a cruel thought, but Lilith can be just as ruthless as Leonard when she needs to be. Ray prefers to call their particular brand of cruelty pragmatism, but no matter how he says it to himself, he’s capable of being just as brutal with their city or their kids hanging in the balance.

Ray stops thinking when she rolls the condom on and he actually whimpers at the sensation because it feels almost too good. Leonard is behind her when he opens his eyes, cupping her breasts and swirling the rough pads of his thumbs over her nipples. “Lil,” he whines, “ _please_. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do anything—”

Lilith lets the head of him slip inside her and it feels so good Ray decides he must not be immortal after all because he dies a little death then and there as she rolls her hips. Which is nothing compared to how it feels when she comes on his cock—the raw noise he makes is almost inhuman. Leonard whispers something in her ear after her fourth orgasm. Ray makes a weak noise in protest when she stops riding him. Then she takes the cock ring off and he comes harder than he ever has in his life, stars falling behind his eyelids as his hips buck helplessly beneath her.

“Ray,” Lilith whispers conspiratorially in his ear, “you can put your hands on me now if you want.”

Leonard exhales a triumphant laugh when Ray flails halfheartedly in a failed attempt to do just that.

“Okay,” Lilith exhales another soft _woo_ , “we have to meet our daughter in half an hour.” With that, she rolls off the bed and hobbles to their bathroom. Then she pauses in the doorway and glances over her shoulder at Leonard, who is watching her walk away with an appreciative look on his face, his cock hard again from seeing her with Ray. “Well,” she raises her eyebrows like a challenge, “are you coming?”

* * *

**2015**

* * *

Lilith’s first date with Ray is a disaster: he takes her on a hot air balloon, which is terrifying because Lilith is not a fan of heights, and they argue in midair about whether or not it’s weird to have the man operating the balloon there with them.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Ray insists.

“Of course you don’t,” Lilith huffs, “you probably grew up with maids and butlers and catering waitstaff fading into the background at your family estate in Connecticut.”

Ray shrugs because she isn’t wrong, but he does wonder if she hazarded a guess based on what he told her about his family or whether she got the information from a psychometric vision.

Jackie Jupiter—the wife Loren cheated on with Vicki when they were engaged to create Lilith—happens to be at the fancy restaurant he takes her to for dinner. Lilith actually stops time in the restaurant to breathe through an anxiety attack before she explains the situation to Ray.

Ray, to his credit, offers his arm to her and matches his pace to hers while she hobbles away. Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ once they’re back on the street outside. “Okay,” she says, “let’s go.”

“Yeah,” Ray sighs with his whole body. “Where?”

“Where you’re not trying too hard to woo me when you’ve already got me and I’m not snarking at you because I’m terrified of screwing this up,” Lilith retorts. “Someplace we can have an actual conversation without a dude flying the hot air balloon not fading into the background or my wicked stepmother giving me the stinkeye.”

Ray bends to kiss her in the middle of the sidewalk, leaving disgruntled passersby to shuffle around them on their way to get wherever they’re going. This is their second kiss—the first happened at S. T. A. R. Labs the week before—so she knows he likes it when she taps the lingual frenulum under his tongue with the tip of hers. Lilith is blushing when he pulls back and grins at her. “I think I know a place,” he says.

Ray takes her to the closest Big Belly Burger. Lilith orders fries and dips one in her chocolate milkshake.

“That looks disgusting,” Ray arches his eyebrows at her while she eats.

Lilith raises her own eyebrows like a challenge before she dips another fry into her milkshake and offers it to him. Ray tries it and makes a low noise that moves through his chest to his throat.

“That is not at all disgusting,” he gives her a crooked grin that does inappropriate things to her, “you’re a genius.”

“I’m not the first person to dip a fry in their milkshake,” Lilith points out.

Ray takes a bite of his cheeseburger and finishes it before he speaks again. “I’m sure you’re not,” he says, “but you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

Lilith scoffs. “I’m not unintelligent,” she clarifies after she eats another fry, “but you’re so out of my league it’s ridiculous. I mean, you’ve been all over the world and gotten three doctorates and done so many things with so many different people—”

“I read your thesis,” Ray informs her.

“What,” Lilith stretches out the vowel sound awkwardly.

“Yeah,” he dips one of his own fries in her milkshake, “it’s on JSTOR. I liked how you drew parallels between the demonization of female sexuality and fictional monsters—like vampires and werewolves—as archetypal personifications of female fantasy.”

“I blame _Twilight_ ,” Lilith deadpans.

“I read _Twilight_ ,” Ray laughs, “all four books. Did you know it’s not really a saga?”

“Yup,” Lilith nods and is glad she pulled her hair back with a clip so it doesn’t flop into her face, “a saga is a heroic narrative that has stories with multiple parts. I guess _Twilight_ technically has multiple parts because it’s four books,” she shrugs with one shoulder, “but the series is set in Bella’s last two years of high school and it’s written in first person limited so the only points of view we get are hers until the Jacob chapters in _Breaking Dawn_. Which isn’t enough of a timespan or variety in the narrative to call the series a saga any way but erroneously. If we got more about the Cullens or the Quileutes independent of Bella’s POV then it’d be a different story, in every sense of the word.” Then she notices him looking at her. “What?” she wants to know.

Ray takes her hand with grease and salt residue on his fingers. Which should be gross, but she doesn’t care. “I am not out of your league,” he says with such certainty is makes her heart clench in her chest, “and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.”

After they eat dinner and talk for so long they ruin the turnover for their table, Ray walks her to the door of her apartment and presses her back against it when he kisses her goodnight so thoroughly her toes curl in the confines of her floral print Doc Martens. Lilith runs the fingers of the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane through his hair while she licks into his mouth, the kiss turning filthy when one of his hands scoops under her skirt to caress her through the fabric of her panties.

Ray breaks the kiss with a groan and presses their foreheads together. “Lil,” his thumb pulls the crotch of her panties aside and he moans out loud as he slips one fingertip between the folds of her cunt, “you’re really wet.”

“Okay,” Lilith exhales a soft _woo_ , “you need to let me get my keys and open the door or quit while you’re ahead. I’m not letting you finger me out here in the hall no matter how much I want you right now.”

Ray takes his hand out from under her skirt and licks the taste of her off his fingertip while she unlocks the door.

Patty, in prime cockblocking form, is watching something on the giant couch with an enormous bowl of popcorn in her lap. Ironically, she’s wearing her _Scientists Do It Better_ t-shirt. “Hey guys,” she waves carefully to avoid jostling the bowl. “How was your date?”

Lilith cackles and covers her mouth with her the hand that isn’t holding onto her cane. “Great,” she wheezes into her cupped palm.

“Yeah.” Ray gives her a sincere, lopsided grin. “It was.”

* * *

**2029**

* * *

Ryan and Isaac are twelve when Lilith starts finding crusty socks in the bottom of the laundry basket. She doesn’t need to be precognitive to know why they’re stiff. She drops the sock on the floor and peers awkwardly down at it for an embarrassingly long time. She eventually gets over herself and pinches the cuff between her thumb and forefinger before she tosses it into the washing machine. She starts a load of laundry and hobbles into the great room.

Leonard is on the couch where she left him. “What took you so long?” he wants to know.

“Apparently our sons have discovered orgasms,” Lilith deadpans, “but instead of going through boxes of tissues, they apparently use their socks to hide the evidence. I’m proud of how resourceful they are, but also grossed out because they’re jerking off and I have no idea what to do with that. I guess it’s time for the Talk.”

“The talk?” Leonard says the word _talk_ like he doesn’t know it’s the Talk with a capital T.

“The sex talk,” Lilith informs the carpet underfoot. “Ray should probably do it, actually.”

Leonard scoffs. “Ray is a prude,” he points out.

“How about no,” Lilith retorts. “I think we should probably save the specifics edition of the Talk until they start high school. I’m just worried that in the meantime sex education is as bad as all of my friends who actually went to public school told me it was. I mean, I learned everything I know about sex from terrible first time experiences with no prior knowledge, illicitly browsing the internet at the library and reading all of the books without checking them out so my parents wouldn’t know I was curious, and my personal experiences since then. Which are mostly with you or Ray—”

“Lilith,” says Leonard, his grin audible in his voice, “you’re babbling.”

“I’m freaking out,” Lilith retorts, “I think babbling is called for.”

Ray comes home from work that night to Leonard folding their laundry while Lilith naps on the couch next to him. “Did she forget we’re having people over for dinner tonight?” he wants to know.

“No,” Leonard turns and looks down at her, “we set the table after she left the soup to simmer, put the cornbread in the warmer, and left the broccoli roasting in the oven. Which should be done in five minutes.”

Ray circles the coffee table where the laundry basket lurks and leans down to kiss him. Leonard reaches up to twist his fingers into his hair and deepen the kiss. Ray pulls back with swollen lips and shortened breath. “I should go set those to broil for her so she doesn’t have to wake up,” he says hoarsely.

Leonard tugs on his hair just hard enough to draw a groan from him before he lets go. “Don’t ruin dinner,” he orders.

Ray grins sheepishly because history shows that ruining dinner is a legitimate possibility for him. “I’ll try not to.”

Lilith, of course, has an eerily accurate internal clock, so she wakes up just as the timer goes off. Leonard pulls her into his arms and grins when she ends up on his lap in the process. “Len,” she protests, “the broccoli—”

“Ray is taking care of the broccoli,” Leonard curls the fingers of one hand into the flesh of her hip through the fabric of her skirt, his thumb stroking the crease of her thigh.

“Okay.” Lilith stops flailing and yields as he twists his other hand into her hair the same way he did to Ray minutes before, kissing her so thoroughly her face and neck flush red.

Someone wolf-whistles from the foyer that leads to the great room. It’s Mick, the only person who has ever successfully broken into their house. Sandra digs her nails into his upper arm hard enough to leave a mark and he looks down at her like he’s falling in love all over again. Connor is visiting his dad, stepmom, and half-brother for the weekend; his mom, stepdad, and half-sister dropped him off at the station where he met Oliver to take the train back to Starling City with him.

“Hi!” Jo waves to them, “is Lucy upstairs?”

Leonard nods and it’s all the invitation she needs to run up the staircase immediately. At least she doesn’t set the banister on fire this time.

Ray attempts to give Ryan and Isaac the sex talk while Lilith puts the food on the table. Leonard offers his assistance without being at all helpful. Ryan is mortified with a side of curious; Isaac is curious with a side of mortified. Mick eventually invades the sex talk and pours the adults involved shots of “liquid courage” in the form of the absurdly expensive whiskey he stole from their liquor cabinet.

Lisa, Cisco, and their twins arrive fashionably late. Lisa goes where the shots are. Cisco ends up hanging out with Lilith and Sandra in the kitchen to avoid contributing to the sex talk because _ain’t nobody got time for that_. Archie decides to hang out with his uncles and his cousins, a decision he totally regrets once he realizes what exactly is going on in there. Leslie goes upstairs to hang out with Lucy and Jo, who remain blissfully ignorant of the shenanigans going on downstairs.

Ray is drunkenly morose by the time dinner is ready, but he gets better once he starts drinking water and putting solid food in his stomach. Mick is eyeing their fireplace like it’s giving him ideas, bad ones. Leonard, meanwhile, keeps trying to smooth his hand up Lilith’s skirt under the table until she intertwines their fingers while they eat to stop him because what he has in mind is totally inappropriate with their kids and his sister in the room. It occurs to her halfway through a piece of cornbread that Isaac might be reading his mind and Lilith groans internally. Which is dissonant as hell because her dearly departed grandmother’s cornbread is _really good_.

Lilith shoos Ray and Leonard into their bedroom after dinner. Then she drags Ryan, Isaac, Archie, and Leslie into the reading room. “Here’s the thing,” she flops in to her papasan chair and pins them with her best mom look, “sex is weird. Like, it’s a strange concept to think about. There are more ways to have sex than you probably think. Hand stuff counts. Oral counts. Butt stuff counts. All of that is a sexual experience. Masturbation is totally normal,” she can feel the blush crawling back up her neck, “no matter what biological sex you are. Of course you don’t have to have sex with yourself or anyone else if you don’t want to. Not ever. There is a common misconception that if you don’t want to have sex at all then something must be wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you as long as everything you’re doing is explicitly consensual, including abstinence or celibacy. Which brings me to the most important thing when it comes to sex: you have to talk to your partner. Seriously, if you can’t talk about it, then you shouldn’t be doing it. I don’t expect any of you to be doing it until you’re older, but my expectations might be wrong. Always use protection,” Lilith raises her hands palm out as if to say _full stop_. “Always protect yourself. Always check to make sure the condom isn’t expired, and don’t keep one in your back pocket because the friction generated from walking around can wear holes whatever material it’s made of. Never lie or make promises you can’t keep to get out of using a condom. Just don’t. Also, pulling out is not a viable way to avoid using condoms because pre-come sometimes has sperm in it.”

Archie raises his hand. Lilith points to him and says, “shoot.”

“What about…” he twists his fingers together to have something to do with his hands. “What about having sex with other guys?”

“Literally everything I said applies to dudes having sex with other dudes,” Lilith says. “Always use a condom because they prevent infection as well as pregnancy, but you shouldn’t use oil-based lubricant because it’s not safe to use with latex condoms,” she rolls her ankle to pop the joint out of habit, “water-based lube works pretty well—”

“I can read minds, mom.” Isaac interjects with a high-pitched inflection he refuses to call a whine. “I know way more about sex than I ever wanted to know. Ryan and I promise to do our own laundry from now on if we never have to talk about this again.”

Lilith doesn’t need to be precognitive to know Isaac and Ryan were probably communicating telepathically during the sex talk. “Okay.” she yawns into her cupped palm. _I got my sons to agree to do their own laundry voluntarily_ , she grins up at the ceiling of her reading room, _that means I win_.

* * *

**2043**

* * *

After hours at S. T. A. R. Labs finds three people sitting before their respective monitors in the cortex, holographic screens designated for every masked vigilante in the field that night.

“Okay,” Felicity says, “mandatory communications check. Watchtower here. Come in, Watchtower.”

“Watchtower here.” Inez has propped her feet up on her desk while she meticulously paints her toenails a shade of electric blue called Lapis of Luxury.

“Come in, Oracle.”

“Oracle here.” Babs leans over the arm of her wheelchair to run one finger over the metallic purple ribbon Steph and Nell wove through the spokes when she was asleep the night before, probably.

“Come in, Omen.”

Lilith pushes her glasses back up her nose with her middle finger more out of habit than malice. “Omen here.”

“Also here.” Lucy steals the watch off an unsuspecting passerby, then returns it under the pretense that its hook buckle came undone and it fell off instead of giving credit to her kleptomania.

“Come in, Flash.”

“Flash here,” says Jay.

“Also here,” says Barry.

Walter speeds to dramatically look down on Central City from atop a building. “Flash here.”

Wally runs to check on his stepdaughter before he speeds back to stand beside his wife. Artemis is crouched like a tiger with her claws out because the trail that leads to her cryokinetic ex-husband has gone cold and it’s pissing her off. “Also here.”

“Come in, Kid Flash.”

“Kid Flash here.” Mal ties his dreadlocks back with an elastic that will inevitably snap once he hits his top speed, an exercise in futility.

Nora kisses her long distance boyfriend Robbie—formally known as Robert Queen II, son of Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance—goodbye and speeds the six hundred miles from Starling City to Central City before she responds. “Also here.”

“Come in, Impulse.”

“Impulse here,” says Bart.

“Also here,” says Irey.

“Come in, Atom.”

Ray pauses in midair over the river that separates Central City and Keystone City. “Atom here.”

“Also here.” Ryan bends down to kiss Archie sweetly before he puts his helmet back on.

“Come in, Mastermind.”

“I’m not here,” Isaac deadpans. “I have sleeps to sleep.”

“Wow,” Felicity covers her mic with her hand, “he is so your son.”

Lilith rolls her eyes behind the chunky brown frames of her glasses. “Come in, Vibe.”

“Vibe here,” says Cisco.

“Also here.” Archie gathers his dark curls into a man-bun and showcases the bruise Ryan sucked into his neck in the process.

“Come in, Quake.”

“Quake here.” Leslie inspects her nails, which are perfectly manicured with a polish called Good as Gold, before she puts her protective gauntlet back on.

“Come in, Analog.”

“Analog here.” Luna runs the I. T. department at S. T. A. R. Labs and when she isn’t saving the world she monitors the Watchtower system from Level 100 to make certain they’re not getting hacked by A. R. G. U. S. or nefarious third parties.

“Come in, Tesla.”

“Tesla here.” Dita claws the fingers of one hand through her hair and sucks the sparks of static electricity generated by the motion from her fingertips.

“Come in, Vega.”

Imako looks up at the stars and gives the Vega planetary system a three fingered salute in homage to Katniss from _The Hunger Games_. “Vega here.”

“Come in, Doctor Light.”

Yasu straps his energy blaster to his back. It never ceases to amaze him that he managed to finish medical school so the doctor aspect of his codename is not a lie. “Doctor Light here.”

“Come in, Supernova.”

Raz tugs on xyr girlfriend’s bulletproof red hood and pulls Lian into a soft kiss before xe checks in. “Supernova here.”

“Come in, Magenta.”

“I’m not here,” Frankie clicks the stud in her tongue against her teeth when she talks. “I’m foiling Isaac’s diabolical plan to nap before his patrol tonight with my ladyparts.” Luckily his powers render leaving his apartment to patrol unnecessary.

Lucy makes a gagging noise at her brother and his queerplatonic partner. Lilith covers her mic with one hand and cackles into the palm of the other. Felicity ignores them. “Come in, Flamebird.”

“Flamebird here.” Felicia is at Jitters with her girlfriend Connie Noleski and Connie’s boyfriend Chester Runk, drinking chai in costume before her patrol begins.

“Come in, Firestorm.”

Jason Rusch—son of Alvin Rusch and his wife Sylvie, née Stein, whom Caitlin meet briefly in 2015 when Martin was missing and Ronnie was presumed dead—inherits the FIRESTORM matrix from his uncle after Martin dies. “Firestorm here,” says Ronnie in Jason’s voice.

“Come in, Frostbite.”

“Frostbite here,” says Caitlin.

“Also here.” Elaine lets the string of tiny ice crystals forming between her thumb and forefinger melt so Leslie can hold her hand, intertwining their fingers through gloves and gauntlets.

“Come in, Killer Frost.”

“Killer Frost here,” says Crystal.

“Come in, Heatstroke.”

“Heatstroke here.” Jo stuffs her hands into the pockets of the arsonist’s coat she inherited from her father while she inventories the incendiary devices on her person.

“Come in, Cobalt.”

Mel twirls a blue flame between her fingers the way a person who isn’t pyrokinetic might do a similar trick with a lighter or a coin. “Cobalt here.”

“Come in, Green Arrow.”

“Green Arrow here,” says Oliver in Starling City.

“Also here,” says Connor in Central City.

“Come in, Red Arrow.”

“Red Arrow here,” says Thea.

“Also here,” says Robbie.

“Come in, Red Hood.”

“Red Hood here,” says Roy in Keystone City.

“Also here,” says Lian in Central City.

Jason doesn’t say _here_ even though Oracle knows he can access their frequency, but that doesn’t mean he’s not listening.

“Come in, Canaries.”

“Black Canary here,” says Laurel.

“White Canary here,” says Sara.

“Come in, Sparrow.”

“Sparrow here,” says Nyssa.

“Come in, Doves.”

“Dove here,” says Don in Starling City.

“Also here,” says Dawn in Gotham City.

“Come in, Hawks.”

“Hawkwoman here,” says Kendra in Starling City.

“Hawkman here,” says Hank in Gotham City.

“Come in, Starling.”

“Starling here,” says Eve in the city she used as her namesake when she became a vigilante. Laurel and Eve dated when Laurel was in law school, they stayed friends after they broke up, and eventually she joined the Birds of Prey.

“Also here,” says Steph in Gotham City while she twirls her cape, which is a precise shade of eggplant.

“Come in, Thorn.”

“Thorn here,” says Rose, short for Rhosyn.

“Come in, Sin.”

Cindy adjusts her domino mask and swats at Thea, who is messing up her hair by running her fingers through it. “Sin here.”

“Come in, Vixen.”

Mari stretches like a lioness, all predatory grace and power, before she responds. “Vixen here.”

“Come in, Huntress.”

“Huntress here,” says a Helena of the Bertinelli variety in Starling City.

“Also here,” says a Helena of the Kyle variety in Gotham City.

“Come in, Question.”

“Question here,” says Victoria in Starling City.

“Also here,” says Renee in Central City.

“Come in, Katana.”

“Katana here,” says Tatsu.

“Come in, Judomaster.”

“Judomaster here,” says Sonia.

“Come in, Manhunter.”

“Manhunter here,” says a Kate of the Spencer variety.

“Come in, Harbinger.”

Sadie inherited her codename from her mother, her preference for Beretta pistols from her father, and a well-loved black leather jacket from her namesake. “Harbinger here.”

“Come in, Freelancer.”

Andrea—born Andrew Diggle Junior—got her codename from her Uncle Johnny. She eventually wound up dating the daughter of the man who shot her father, proving unequivocally that the universe has a sick sense of humor. “Freelancer here.”

“Come in, Deadshot.”

Zoe went looking for information about the father she barely remembers as a teenager. Her quest led her to A. R. G. U. S., the agency that got her father killed, and to the Suicide Squad run by Damita Waller, who gave Zoe the codename her father used once upon a time. “Deadshot here.”

“Come in, Misfit.”

“Misfit here,” says Charlie.

“Come in, Talon.”

“Talon here,” says Mary.

“Come in, Hawkfire.”

“Hawkfire here,” says Bette.

“Come in, Batwoman.”

“Batwoman here,” says a Kate of the Kane variety.

“Come in, Catwoman.”

“Catwoman here,” says Holly.

“Come in, Batman.”

Dick flips off a building and yells something that sounds like _parkour_ before he checks in. “Batman here.”

“Come in, Black Bat.”

Cass says _here_ in Chinese before she remembers that nobody on this frequency except Ryan also speaks Mandarin. “Black Bat here.”

“Come in, Batgirl.”

“Batgirl here,” says Nell.

“Come in, Nightwing.”

“ _Tt_ ,” says Damian because he refuses to dignify that with a response.

“Come in, Red Robin.”

“Red Robin here,” says Tim.

“Come in, Robin.”

Carrie scales a building in scaly panties and swears at Dick internally. “Robin here.”

“Okay,” Lilith yawns through the word, “have fun storming the castle and punching crime in the face. I’m going to take a nap. Omen out.”

**THE END**


End file.
